Chapter Text
The wind brought laughter from the tourney grounds, and the fat smell of roasting meat. Dunk heard none of it. There was only Aerion, and the wet heat of his mouth, and the prince’s scent filling his head until there was no room left in it for sense.
He knew his smallclothes were damp. He could feel it between his thighs.
That should have shamed him back to his wits. It did not.
The kiss changed. Aerion made a sound against his mouth, low and sharp, and his fingers closed hard at the back of Dunk’s neck. He never asked. Dunk bent to him all the same. He was too big to be hauled anywhere by a hand so small, yet down he went, because the prince wished it, because his own body had turned traitor, because pride was a thin cloak on a cold night when Aerion’s teeth were at his lip.
The smells rose together in the cold night air.
Blood.
Smoke.
Tar.
Wildflowers crushed under rain.
Aerion drew back first. His mouth was wet, his lips swollen. The cut at the corner had opened again.
Dunk had done that.
The thought sat low in his belly, guilt and want so tangled he could not tell the one from the other. Then Aerion licked the blood from his lip and looked up at him through heavy eyes.
“You are shaking,” the prince said.
Dunk was. He had not known it until Aerion named it. He tried to answer, but his knees went soft beneath him. One hand caught at the elm. Bark bit into his palm. He pressed his back to the trunk and tried to stand as a knight ought to stand, straight and steady, but another wave of heat rolled through him, deep as a fever.
His cock was heavy with blood. His hole clenched on nothing. Slick gathered hot between his thighs.
Dunk’s face went red as a forge.
Aerion went still.
That was worse than laughter would have been.
The prince’s gaze dropped to Dunk’s belt, to the hang of his shirt, to the ugly strain in his thighs. Dunk wished the ground would open and swallow him down. He wished Aerion would stop looking. He wished he would look harder.
Aerion breathed in.
Slowly.
Dunk shut his eyes.
“No,” Aerion said. “Look at me.”
Dunk obeyed before he could think better of it.
The prince was not smiling now. His face had gone still as carved stone, and his eyes were dark, violet drowned almost black.
“It hurts,” Dunk said, and hated himself for saying it.
“Where?”
Dunk shook his head.
“Do not be stupid. Where does it hurt?”
“Here,” Dunk’s hand went to his belly, pressing hard, as if he could force the ache down by strength alone.
Aerion’s mouth tightened.
For a heartbeat, Dunk thought the prince would say something cruel. Instead Aerion stepped back.
The loss of him was sudden as a draught through an open door. Dunk wanted him back.
Aerion unclasped his cloak and shook it out over the damp grass at the foot of the elm, his movements quick and angry.
Black wool. Scarlet satin. A prince’s cloak.
Dunk stared.
“My prince—”
“Lie down.”
Dunk did not move.
Aerion looked up at him.
“Do not make me say it twice.”
“I’ll dirty it.”
Aerion looked at him then, and the corner of his mouth twitched.
“Gods be good,” he said. “You are shaking against a tree, soaking through your breeches, and still fretting over my cloak.”
Heat climbed Dunk’s neck. “That is not—”
“I can smell it.”
That shut him up.
Aerion’s smile came back, thin and wicked.
“There,” he said. “Down, Ser Duncan.”
Dunk lowered himself.
The heat in him had begun to climb again, and he did not trust his legs to hold him through it. He sank onto the red satin with his back against the elm, knees drawn up awkwardly, too long and too large for the small space the prince had made for him.
The cloak smelled of Aerion.
Tar caught in wool. Smoke sunk deep into the weave. Blood, faint and copper-sharp beneath it. Dunk took one breath and something inside him loosened by a finger’s width.
Then another.
The pain did not leave him. But it stopped clawing quite so hard.
He hated the relief.
He wanted to bury his face in the cloak like a hound.
Worse, he wanted to catch Aerion by the waist and drag him close. Wanted the prince’s slight hard body against his own. To press his nose to the place where Aerion’s neck met his shoulder and breathe him in until the heat stopped gnawing him from the inside out.
He did none of it.
He sat half-curled against the tree, one hand over his belly, the other fisted in satin.
Aerion watched him.
“Better?”
Dunk swallowed.
“A little,” he admitted.
Something shifted in the prince’s face. It was not softness. Aerion had little of that in him. But something settled in him.
“You see?” Aerion said. “Better me than a ditch.”
Dunk tried to glare at him. It must have been a poor attempt, for Aerion only smiled.
Then the prince knelt between his legs.
Something pulled tight in Dunk’s chest.
It was an awkward business. Dunk was too large, too broad, too long in the limb, his knees bracketing more space than the prince needed. Aerion clicked his tongue, shifted nearer, and laid one hand on Dunk’s thigh.
Dunk meant to tell him not to.
Instead he shivered.
Aerion’s hand was warm through his breeches.
The prince looked up at him from between his knees. He was smaller, aye. But his gaze held command so easily that Dunk felt pinned by it, not the other way around.
“Look at you,” Aerion said.
Dunk’s jaw tightened.
“You are wet,” he said.
Dunk went rigid from throat to heel.
Aerion’s gaze dropped, shameless, to the dark place between his thighs. “Do not trouble yourself with lies. I can see it.”
His hand rested on Dunk’s thigh, possessive and hot.
Dunk’s face burned. “Then why say it?”
Aerion smiled. “Because I like seeing you blush.”
Dunk’s mouth opened, then shut.
Aerion smiled as if that pleased him best of all.
“Oh, I will remember you fondly, Ser Duncan.” He leaned closer. “Will you remember me?”
His fingers brushed the inside of Dunk’s thigh.
Dunk’s hips moved. A small, wretched lift toward the prince’s hand.
Aerion went still.
Dunk shut his eyes and turned his head aside. Shame struck him hot as a slap.
A hand caught his face and turned it back.
Then Aerion kissed him again, open-mouthed and hungry, and his body came down against Dunk’s. Slender, hard, alive with heat. Dunk felt him then, the hard length of him pressing close, rubbing against the wetness between Dunk’s thighs.
The red satin twisted in Dunk’s fist. Aerion’s scent rose from it, thick as smoke.
Dunk made a sound.
Aerion drew back and stared.
Dunk stared back, horrified.
The prince’s eyes had gone dark and heavy-lidded.
Dunk’s throat worked.
“I didn’t mean—”
Aerion licked his lip, slowly.
Then he moved his hips again, slow, pressing where Dunk was aching, watching his face with cruel attention.
Dunk wanted to look away.
He wanted to tell him to stop.
He wanted him to do it again, harder.
The wants sat in him together, making a misery of his pride.
Dunk’s hand tightened in the cloak.
It smelled like Aerion. The air smelled like him. Smoke and blood and desire. The ache inside pulsed again, then bloomed, hungry, and this time the pain was threaded through with need so sharp it stole sense from him.
Aerion waited.
“Ask, ser,” he said.
Dunk’s breath caught. “No.”
Aerion pressed against him again.
Dunk bit his lip hard enough to taste blood.
“No?” Aerion said softly.
Dunk looked down at him. At the bruises his own hands had left on that beautiful, hateful face. At the mouth he had split. They had made a mess of each other.
Dunk wanted to touch him.
He wanted to be touched.
He wanted to stop wanting.
“My prince,” he said, and hated how broken it came out.
Aerion’s eyes flared.
“Yes?”
There were too many wildflowers in the air. Too much smoke. Too much blood.
No dignity left worth the saving.
“Please,” he said.
“Please what, ser?”
Cruel thing, Dunk thought. Sweet Mother, what a cruel thing.
“Please touch me, my prince.”
Aerion’s hand settled against the wet heat between his thighs.
Dunk’s head struck back against the elm. The sound that left him was not knightly, nor manly, nor anything he wished the prince to hear.
Aerion smiled.
“There,” he said. “What a voice you have.”
Dunk could feel himself under the cloth, hard and wet and aching, his smallclothes clinging where the slick had soaked through. The heat had made every part of him shameless. His cock strained at the fabric too, heavy with blood.
The heat crawled up Dunk’s throat and into his face.
Aerion’s hand moved then, slow across the front of his breeches. Not enough to satisfy. More than enough to set Dunk’s hips twitching again. The prince watched the motion with his lips parted, his own breath caught behind his teeth.
Dunk saw it.
The prince was not untouched. His red doublet still sat neat on his body, dark cloth and silver fastenings, but there was no hiding the hard line of him beneath. When Aerion shifted closer, Dunk felt it brush against his thigh.
The knowledge went through him hot and stupid.
Aerion wanted him.
Dunk must have looked at it too long, because Aerion’s eyes narrowed.
Dunk swallowed. “You said I was a liar.”
“You are.”
“So are you.”
Aerion’s mouth curved. “That sounded almost clever. But I never claimed I do not want you.”
Dunk might have answered, but Aerion’s hand pressed harder and the words went out of him. His head tipped back against the elm. Bark caught in his hair. His chest rose, broad and bare where the shirt had fallen open, and the prince’s gaze moved to it.
The look changed.
It was not the mocking glance he had given Dunk’s face, nor the pleased, cruel attention he had given Dunk’s shame. This was slower. Hungrier. Aerion looked at him as if some part of him had only now reckoned the size of the thing before him.
Dunk saw himself in that look and wanted to flinch from it.
His own body had always been a trouble to him. Too tall for doorways. Too broad for borrowed mail. Too strong when he forgot to be careful of it. Great hands, great feet, great clumsy shoulders. He knew he was big. Men had been telling him so since he was a boy.
Aerion looked at him like big meant something else entirely.
His gaze went over Dunk’s chest, the dark hair there damp with sweat, the breadth of him under bruises and bandage, the hard weight of muscle earned by honest work. Then lower, to his belly, to his thighs spread awkwardly around the prince. Thick thighs, too large for grace, straining the seams of his breeches. The prince’s attention dragged over them and stopped.
Aerion bit his lip.
The breath went out of Dunk all at once.
Aerion noticed and looked up through his lashes.
Then his hand slid from between Dunk’s thighs to the hem of his shirt.
“Off.”
Dunk blinked.
“What?”
Aerion tugged at the cloth. “This. Off.”
Dunk’s stomach clenched.
Aerion saw that too. His fingers tightened in the shirt.
“Do not make me undress you like a child. Take it off.”
He gripped the torn hem and dragged the shirt up.
The movement hurt his ribs. He hissed through his teeth, and for one moment Aerion’s hand was there, quick and firm at his side, steadying him while the cloth passed over his head. Dunk emerged into the cold night bare to the waist, hair rucked around his face, bandage crossing one side, bruises dark over his skin.
Aerion took the shirt from him and dropped it careless onto the grass.
Then he looked.
Dunk had never felt naked like that. Aerion looked as if seeing him was doing something to him.
The prince’s tongue touched his lower lip.
Dunk’s cock throbbed hard enough that he had to press his head back and breathe through it.
Aerion smiled.
“Oh,” he said. “You liked that.”
Dunk closed one hand over his own knee. “No.”
“Still?”
Dunk did not answer.
Aerion leaned forward and set both hands on Dunk’s thighs.
They looked small there. Pale hands on thick muscle, the fingers pressing into linen, moving him, opening him wider. Dunk’s breeches pulled tight with it. The damp patch between his legs cooled in the night air, plain to see now.
Aerion stared at it.
Dunk’s shame rose hot.
The prince’s gaze came back to his chest. The look in it was not stone any longer. It was hunger, plain and black-eyed. He bent, still fully clothed, red velvet and fine fastenings, and put his mouth to Dunk’s skin.
Dunk jolted.
A brush of lips against the hair of his chest. A breath. Then Aerion’s mouth, warm and careful, dragging over sweat and salt and the place where Dunk’s heart was hammering fit to break a rib.
Dunk made a sound before he could think to swallow it.
Aerion’s hands tightened on his thighs.
“That is it,” Aerion murmured, more to himself than to Dunk.
Dunk looked away.
Aerion bit him.
Not hard enough to break the skin. Hard enough to send fire through him, sharp and bright, straight to the aching place between his legs. Dunk’s hips lifted. He felt Aerion’s hardness brush between his thighs again through layers of cloth, and this time the prince’s breath faltered too.
Dunk looked down.
Aerion’s face was against his chest, silver hair damp at the temple, bruised mouth open on him. The sight of it made Dunk’s head swim.
Aerion’s hand slid up over his ribs, careful around the bandage, then cruelly light over one nipple.
Dunk jerked.
The reaction was so sudden that it startled both of them.
Aerion went still.
Then, slowly, his eyes lifted.
Dunk’s face went hot.
“That too?”
“No.”
Aerion touched him again.
Dunk’s answer broke in his throat.
It was the heat that made him so tender. That was all. It had to be all. But the prince’s fingers circled, then pinched light, and Dunk’s whole body answered.
Aerion’s look turned to something delighted and awful.
“Oh, ser.”
“Don’t.”
“You should have told me.”
“I didn't know.”
That gave the prince pause.
Then his smile came back, sharper. “Then I shall be thorough.”
Dunk had no warning before Aerion’s mouth closed over him.
He cried out.
Too loud.
Aerion’s hand came up and covered his mouth at once, eyes glittering against Dunk’s chest. The prince did not stop. His tongue moved hot over tender skin, his teeth catching just enough to make Dunk shake. Dunk gripped the cloak beneath him with one hand and Aerion’s shoulder with the other.
Aerion released him at last with a wet, satisfied sound.
Dunk dragged air through his nose.
“There,” Aerion said, wiping his mouth with his thumb.
Dunk glared at him, or tried to.
Aerion looked pleased by the attempt.
“You are pink to the ears.”
“Shut up.”
The prince’s brows rose.
Dunk knew what he had said too late.
For a moment the prince only looked at him.
Then his smile came slow.
“I let it pass,” Aerion said. “Because you were amusing.”
Then hand slid down his belly.
“I may let it pass again if you make the right sound.”
Dunk was still deciding whether to be angry when the prince’s palm settled over him through his breeches.
The sound came.
Aerion laughed soft.
“Yes. That one will do.”
Dunk’s legs shifted wider. Aerion’s clothed body pressed between them.
Dunk’s heart kicked.
Aerion’s fingers moved to the fastening of Dunk’s breeches.
The world seemed to hold around that small, practical motion.
Dunk caught his wrist.
Aerion looked up.
“No?”
Dunk’s grip trembled.
He could still say it. He knew that.
His body begged him not to.
Aerion waited, eyes black and intent.
Dunk let go.
Aerion’s mouth curved.
“Good little knight.”
His fingers went back to the laces.
Dunk stared up at the branches overhead while the prince worked them loose. Every tug shifted the fabric against him. Every shift made him feel how wet he was, how hard, how open his body had grown under the prince’s hands and mouth.
The breeches loosened.
Cold air touched damp linen beneath.
Dunk made a broken sound and covered his face with his arm.
Aerion stopped.
“No.”
Dunk did not move.
Aerion’s voice sharpened. “No hiding.”
Dunk dragged his arm down.
The prince’s face had gone hard, but his breathing had changed. Faster now. Less smooth. He was still fully clothed, still put together, but desire had roughened him. His mouth was wet. His hair was disheveled. His bulge pressed obvious against his own fine breeches.
“You see what you do?” Aerion asked.
Dunk could not answer.
Aerion leaned in, close enough that his breath touched Dunk’s stomach.
“I want you to see.”
Then he pulled at Dunk’s breeches.
Dunk lifted his hips, for there was no help for it.
Aerion’s eyes went dark at the obedience.
The breeches came down over Dunk’s hips. The smallclothes beneath clung wet to him, leaving little to be guessed at. Dunk heard the prince’s breath stop.
The silence stretched.
Dunk's face burned.
“My prince?”
Aerion did not answer at once.
He was looking.
At the hard, leaking weight of him. At the slick shining on his thighs. At the body Dunk had spent half his life trying to make smaller somehow. The prince looked with open hunger, and something very near to awe.
“Smallclothes too,” he said at last.
Dunk’s throat worked.
Aerion’s eyes lifted. “Did I stutter?”
Dunk pushed the last cloth down.
The night air touched him bare.
He had never felt so seen in all his days.
The prince’s gaze moved over him slow, and vicious, and reverent despite itself. Then he bent and put his mouth to the inside of Dunk’s thigh.
Dunk’s whole body shuddered.
Aerion bit him there, just enough to mark.
“Mine,” he said against the skin.
Dunk’s breath broke.
Aerion’s hand slid higher.
“Open your legs properly.”
Dunk did.
He hated that he did.
He needed to.
Aerion watched the move of him, licking his lower lip like a man at a feast who means to taste every dish. Then his fingers touched the bare slick skin, careful at first, and Dunk’s head fell back against the elm with a sound too low.
The prince smiled.
“There,” he said again. “Now we have begun.”
Dunk did not know what that meant until Aerion lowered his mouth.
The first touch sent his hands flying to the cloak.
He did not trust himself with Aerion, not with his body like this, fevered and loose and half out of his own keeping. So he gripped the satin instead, twisting it in both fists.
Then Aerion touched him again, and Dunk forgot even that much.
The cold night air was on his bare chest, on his thighs, on every shameful place Aerion had uncovered, but Aerion’s mouth was hot. Careful in a way that did not feel kind, for the prince was learning him. Drawing one helpless sound after another out of Dunk’s throat.
Dunk tried to be quiet.
Aerion’s hand moved over his cock, slow and possessive, and quiet was no longer in him.
The prince’s face was half-shadowed between his thighs, bruised mouth wet, eyes lifted to Dunk’s face. There was triumph in them. Cruelty too. But under it, something darker and less tidy.
Hunger.
Dunk had never thought to be wanted like that.
He had never thought to be wanted at all.
“Do not look away now,” Aerion said.
Dunk swallowed.
Aerion smiled.
Then he went back to him.
The heat took the gesture and made it vast. Every small movement went through Dunk as if his skin had been scraped down to the raw. His cock was hard and aching under Aerion’s hand, his body wet where the heat had made him wet. The want low in him. The want between his thighs. The want in his chest, shameful and vast, wanting the prince closer, wanting him higher, wanting his weight and his scent and his mouth and the sound of his voice.
Dunk should have hated that. Mayhaps he did. It was hard to tell, when his body kept taking every cruel thing the prince gave it and turning the cruelty sweet.
Aerion’s hand moved again.
Dunk arched before he could stop himself.
The prince shifted, one hand pressing Dunk’s thigh wider, the other still working him with a slow and awful patience. The difference between them was a jest of the gods. Aerion clothed and narrow and bright of eye; Dunk bare, too large for the cloak beneath him, his knees spread round a prince who had no business fitting so neat into the ruin of him.
He wanted to close his legs.
He wanted to open them farther.
Aerion decided for him.
Dunk let him.
The wanting had grown easier, and that frightened him worse than the pain had.
His body had stopped fighting every touch. His hips lifted when the prince’s hand moved. His thighs trembled when the prince’s mouth came back to him. His breath came faster, rougher, and when Aerion pressed him open on slick fingers, slow enough not to wound and hard enough to be obeyed, Dunk did not pull away.
He gripped the cloak and took it.
The first stretch made him go silent.
Aerion noticed at once.
“Ser.”
The concern sat wrong in the prince’s mouth. Too near, too kind. Dunk looked down at him, dazed.
The prince’s face was not gentle. But it was fixed on him, narrowed down to him, in a way that left no room for nothing else.
“Breathe.”
Dunk did.
“Again.”
He obeyed.
The pressure eased. Or he eased around it. He could not tell which. His body was slick and fever-soft.
Aerion lowered his head again and took Dunk’s cock in his mouth.
Dunk’s whined, low in his throat, a sound he could not swallow.
For a while there were no words. Only the elm at his back, the cloak beneath him, the black sky overhead. Only the prince’s mouth and fingers, moving together, each pulling him apart in a different direction. The pleasure built in him uneven, the way a storm builds. First far off. Then nearer. Then everywhere at once.
Dunk felt himself begin to lose the shape of thought.
He made the mistake of reaching for the prince’s hair.
Aerion stopped.
Dunk froze.
Slow, the prince looked up.
Dunk’s hand hung useless in the air.
“I didn’t mean—”
“You may hold,” Aerion said. His voice had gone rough. “You may not command.”
Dunk nodded, fast and humiliating, past speech.
The answer pleased him. It pleased him so much Dunk could smell it, sharp and hot beneath the smoke.
Aerion bent back down.
Dunk’s hand settled in his hair, light at first, then tighter when the pleasure rose again and his body forgot caution. Aerion allowed it. More than allowed it. He pressed closer, and Dunk’s fingers shook against his scalp.
The storm broke.
It came on too fast, rushing up from the place where the pain had lived all night. Dunk tried to warn him. Tried to say something. His mouth opened, but what came out was only a helpless, broken sound.
Aerion did not stop.
Dunk spent with his head thrown back against the elm and a cry in his throat.
His cock spilled over the prince’s lips, and his body clenched hard around the fingers still buried in him. The pleasure tore through him, bright enough to blind. For a few breaths the terrible knot in his belly came loose, like a fist unclenching.
Dunk sagged back against the tree.
He could hear himself breathing.
He could hear Aerion breathing too.
The prince lifted his head slow. His mouth was wet. His eyes were black with wanting.
Dunk should have felt spent.
He did not.
The heat uncurled again before he had caught his breath, slower this time, and deeper. He had thought it finished. It was not. It had only slept with one eye open.
Aerion watched understanding reach him.
His smile came slow.
“Still hungry?”
Aerion laughed softly.
Dunk hated him then. Truly hated him. Hated his mouth, his pretty cruel face, his soft white hair, his hands, the smell of him, the way he made shame feel like heat and heat feel like hunger. He was still clothed, still beautiful and bruised and awful, still hard enough that the shape of him strained plain beneath his breeches. The sight of it made Dunk’s mouth go dry.
He could not ask.
Instead he reached for the laces at Aerion’s waist.
Aerion went still.
Dunk’s fingers were clumsy. Too large. Still shaking from what had just been done to him. He fumbled once, twice, face burning hotter with every failed pull.
Aerion looked down at his hands.
Then up at his face.
“Oh,” he said softly.
Dunk did not answer.
He only kept on at the prince’s laces, too afraid to say aloud what he wanted.
The fine laces were made for finer hands than his. He made a rough, frustrated sound that seemed to amuse the prince far too well.
Aerion let him struggle a moment.
Then he caught Dunk’s wrists. His hands were small against them, slender and pale, and they stopped Dunk all the same.
“Look at me.”
Dunk did.
Aerion’s face was flushed now. His mouth was wet and bruised, the cut at the corner red again. Sweat had darkened the pale hair.
“You want something,” Aerion said.
Dunk’s throat worked.
The heat in him had eased with his spending, but only enough to make the deeper want the clearer for it. It had been a fog before. Pain and shame and sweetness all muddled together. Now it had a name.
Aerion.
The weight of him. The smell of him. The hard heat Dunk had felt against him. The thing his body had been begging for since the yard, that his mind had been too feared to admit.
“I don’t know,” Dunk said.
Aerion laughed under his breath.
“Be both know it to be untrue, ser.”
Dunk shut his eyes.
Aerion’s grip tightened.
“No. Eyes open. You do not get to ask for me with your hands and hide with your face.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“You were untying my breeches.”
Dunk had no answer for that.
Aerion leaned closer, still holding his wrists. “If you would have me stop, say stop. If you would have me gone, say leave. If you want me inside you, ser, then you must say so.”
Dunk’s chest rose and fell.
The words stood between them, plain and impossible. He could not say them. He could not. He had been able to beg for touch, because the heat had made an animal of him. But this was a different thing.
He had never done this.
Not with anyone.
The prince’s look shifted at the thought, as if he had caught the scent of it.
Dunk hated that he likely had.
Aerion lowered Dunk’s wrists, but did not let go.
“Are you afraid, ser?”
Dunk’s jaw clenched.
“No.”
“No?” His mouth curled. “Then what are you?”
Dunk looked away.
His throat felt raw.
The true answer rose in him and lodged there, too large to speak.
Wanting.
That was what he was. Wanting like a dog at a butcher’s door. Wanting like a hungry boy with his face to a feast he had no right to touch. Wanting a prince who ought to have been nothing to him but trouble.
Aerion released one wrist only to catch his jaw and turn him back.
“I like that,” he said.
Dunk’s breath caught.
Aerion’s thumb moved once along his jaw. “I like that none have had you. I like that you are this large and this strong and still no man has seen you so. I like that the first alpha you take will be me.”
Dunk’s body answered so sharp he near cursed aloud.
Aerion’s eyes flared.
“Your body has the better sense of you.”
“My prince—”
Aerion bent and kissed him, rough and brief.
Then he rose enough to finish what Dunk had started.
“You are trying,” the prince said. “That is something.”
He laid his own hands over Dunk’s, the slender fingers guiding the clumsy ones, and together they drew the laces loose. The prince’s breath had gone hard and loud and shallow against Dunk’s brow, and Dunk knew the want in him through that alone, through the catch and drag of every breath, and knew the cruelty in his voice for the thin cloak it was. Aerion did not undress. Only the breeches, unlaced. He meant to take Dunk like this, clothed and princely, while Dunk lay bare to him beneath the elm.
The prince settled between his legs again, close enough that Dunk felt the heat of him before all else. His body went tense. The fear came back sudden and sharp, cutting clean through the fever.
Aerion stopped.
For a moment there was only night air and their breathing.
“Ser Duncan.”
His name again. Not some cruel little thing meant to make him flinch.
Dunk looked at him.
Aerion’s face was hard, but not mocking now.
“If you fight yourself the whole way through, it will hurt more.”
Dunk’s breath was fast and shallow. “That your comfort?”
“That is my counsel. I have seen you take much worse from me. I confess I wondered, even then, what else you might take so well.”
A short, bitter breath escaped Dunk. That wasn't quite a laugh. "You talk too much."
The prince lowered the loosened breeches, and Dunk looked, for he could not help but look. A trail of hair ran down from the prince’s navel, darker than the silver on his head, and his cock stood flushed and ready against it. Not large. No larger than Dunk’s own, for all that the one was an alpha’s and the other an omega’s. A small man’s and a big man’s, near enough a match. The wrongness of it, the smallness of him and the want in him both, made the breath stick in Dunk’s chest.
The prince’s hand pressed low on Dunk’s belly, where the heat had been knotting itself the whole night through.
Aerion moved closer.
The first pressure made Dunk’s whole body seize.
His hands flew to Aerion’s arms. Holding with all the strength he was trying not to use. Aerion hissed through his teeth but did not tell him to let go.
Dunk felt him then, the blunt hot press of the prince’s cock against the slick place between his thighs, and his whole body went rigid around the threat of it.
“Breathe,” he said again.
“It hurts.”
“I know.”
“You don’t.”
“No, not like this,” Aerion said, and there was an honest, sharp irritation in it. “But I know you can still stop me, and you have not said the word.”
Dunk stared at him.
“I can’t—” The word came apart in his mouth. “It is too—”
Aerion’s eyes held his.
“You can. Breathe.”
Dunk let out his breath.
Aerion exhaled with him.
He moved slowly.
Dunk made a sound that was almost a groan.
“Good,” Aerion said, quiet.
Slow enough that Dunk felt every inch of the change in himself. Slow enough that the pain had time to turn to heat, and the heat had time to turn to want, and the want had time to turn into something so large it feared him worse than the pain had. His body fought it, and then gave in. The cloak bunched under his hips. The bark pressed into his back. The prince’s scent was everywhere, smoke and tar and blood, thick enough to drown a man.
Dunk heard himself make a sound.
Aerion heard it too.
“Here,” the prince said, voice rough. “That is not pain at all.”
Dunk could not answer.
He arched helplessly. The movement drew them closer together, and both of them froze.
"Seven bloody hells," Aerion swore.
Low, broken words against Dunk’s skin.
The pleasure of that went straight through Dunk.
Aerion lifted his head.
His mouth was wet. His eyes were wild.
“You feel that?” he asked.
Dunk nodded once, for speech was beyond him.
Aerion smiled.
Then he began to move.
Slow.
He moved slow because he wished Dunk to feel it. To be aware of every breath, every stretch, every place where his body stopped its no and began to drag him closer. He wished Dunk’s face open and plain to see.
Dunk gave it to him.
He could not help it.
The shame did not leave him. It stayed, hot behind his eyes, burning in his cheeks, tangled through every sound the prince pulled out of him. But the want rose around it, and over it, and through it, until the shame was only one more part of the wanting.
Aerion saw that too.
“You are changing your mind,” he said.
Dunk shook his head.
“No?”
The prince moved again, deeper this time, and brought his mouth to Dunk’s chest before Dunk could brace for it. Pleasure flashed white behind his eyes.
Dunk gasped.
Aerion was above him, beautiful and bruised and flushed, a sheen of sweat on him. Dunk could feel him inside, moving slow and sure, filling the hollow the heat had carved in him. He could see the pleasure on the prince’s face each time Dunk clenched round him.
Aerion’s expression twisted.
“Seven,” he breathed. “You do not even know what you are doing.”
Dunk’s throat worked.
“That pleases you.”
Aerion looked down at him.
The prince did not bother to lie.
“Yes.”
Dunk trembled.
Aerion bent closer, mouth at the joint of Dunk’s neck and shoulder.
“Yes,” he said again. “It pleases me that I am the first. It pleases me that every time your body learns a thing, it learns it from me. It pleases me that when you think of this, it will be my face you see.”
Dunk’s body clenched hard around him.
Aerion groaned.
“And that pleased you too,” he said against the skin.
Dunk’s arms came up around him before he knew that he had moved, around the narrow back, the hot weight of him, and held.
He turned his face into the side of the prince’s neck.
Smoke and tar and skin, hotter than the cloak, alive. He wanted to hide in it. Wanted to press his nose there and breathe until the whole world narrowed to Aerion. Wanted the prince’s weight on him, in him, around him, until there was no room for anything else.
Aerion caught the movement and laughed, but the sound was rough.
“You want to scent me.”
Dunk went still.
“You do.”
Dunk pressed his hot face harder into the prince’s neck.
Aerion’s hand slid back down to his belly, low and possessive.
“You want to be filled,” he said, and moved slowly as he said it, making the words a thing Dunk could feel. “You want my knot.”
Dunk shook under him.
Aerion’s voice dropped.
“A body like this,” he said, and spread his hand low and possessive over Dunk’s belly, “is wasted on a hedge knight. It was made to carry dragons.”
The words struck harder inside him now.
Aerion moved in him as he said it, and his hand left Dunk’s belly to close around Dunk’s cock where it lay hard and leaking against his stomach. He stroked it slow, in time with the slow drive of his hips, so the words and the touch came as one: the place the words named, and the proof of how badly Dunk wished them true.
Dunk made a sound he did not know in himself.
Aerion’s eyes went dark with triumph.
“Oh,” he said.
Dunk could not look away.
“A body like yours,” Aerion said again, slower, and the cruelty had thinned in it now, worn down to something gentler, “should be full of them.”
“My prince.”
“Be mine.”
Dunk’s body answered before his pride could. It opened around the word. Clenched around it. Took it in until Aerion’s rhythm faltered.
The prince’s control cracked then, in small pieces, and Dunk, who had spent the whole night being looked at, weighed, undressed by those violet eyes, looked back at last.
What he saw stopped his fear cold. Aerion’s eyes had fallen shut. His brows had drawn up and together, the proud line of them broken, his mouth open and soft. He looked nothing like a prince now. He looked like a man on the edge of begging. “Seven hells,” Aerion breathed against Dunk’s collarbone, and then a small wrecked sound left him when Dunk’s hands tightened on his back.
Dunk saw all of it.
Felt all of it.
Then Aerion kissed him hard.
A bruising, open-mouthed thing that swallowed Dunk’s breath while Aerion’s body drove the words deeper than speech could. Dunk clung to him. He did not care, for a few heartbeats, that he was clinging. The heat had become enormous again. It gathered around Aerion, around the weight and motion of him, around the place where Dunk’s body was beginning to feel the first strange pressure of what came next.
Fear flashed through him.
Aerion felt him tense.
He lifted his head.
Dunk’s breath came fast.
“The knot,” Aerion said.
Dunk nodded once, stiff.
“It will stretch.”
Aerion’s hand slid to his jaw.
His body begged. His body ached for the thing that frightened him, desperate and open and shameless now.
Dunk swallowed.
“My prince.”
Aerion’s eyes darkened.
“Yes?”
“Don’t stop.”
He didn’t. The pressure grew.
Dunk’s hands locked on Aerion’s back. Pain sparked, deep and startling. His whole body tried to close against it, then opened wider under the force of heat and scent and Aerion’s voice at his ear telling him to breathe.
“Breathe.”
Dunk did.
“Again.”
He obeyed.
“That’s it. Take it.”
Dunk groaned.
“Mother have mercy—”
Aerion’s mouth went back to his chest, as if he could not resist having every part of him at once. The pleasure there tangled with the stretch below until Dunk lost track of where the fear ended. His body pulsed around Aerion, helplessly drawing him.
The knot pressed deeper.
Dunk made a broken sound.
Aerion answered it with a curse, face buried against Dunk’s chest, teeth grazing skin.
“You were made for this,” he said, voice wrecked. “Gods. You were made for me.”
The words should have been too much.
They were.
Dunk came apart under them.
The release tore through him with Aerion’s knot locking inside, pleasure and pain braided so tightly he could not name either one. His back arched off the cloak. His hands dragged Aerion closer. Wildflowers flooded the air, so thick and sweet that Aerion groaned like it had gone straight into his blood.
Then Aerion followed.
Dunk felt him shake.
Felt the prince’s control finally fail, felt the hot spill of him deep inside, felt the knot hold them together when instinct would have made Dunk flinch away. There was nowhere to go. No way to hide from it. Aerion was in him, tied to him, breathing hard against his skin.
Dunk stared up through the branches of the elm.
For a few breaths, there was no shame.
Only fullness.
Only smoke.
Only the prince’s mouth resting against his chest as if he had forgotten to be cruel.
Then Aerion lifted his head.
His eyes were still dark. His mouth was red. There was a mark blooming on Dunk’s chest where his teeth had been.
Aerion looked at it.
Then at Dunk.
His smile returned, slow and satisfied, and it did not quite hide what was under it.
“There,” he said, voice gone hoarse. “Now you will carry one.” And for once it did not sound like a boast. It sounded like a thing he wished were true.
Then Aerion’s mouth found his throat.
At first Dunk thought it was only another kiss. His lips were hot against the sweat there, his breath ragged and uneven. Dunk lay still under him, dazed by the weight of him, by the knot still holding them together, by the strange, heavy quiet that had come over his body after the breaking.
Then Aerion’s teeth pressed harder.
A bite.
Dunk went cold under the heat.
“No.”
Aerion did not stop at once.
His teeth stayed there poised over the place where the skin was thin and the blood ran close. Dunk felt the intention of it before it happened: the mark, the claim, the scent of it blooming under his skin. Every alpha in the camp would know. Every omega too. Ser Duncan the Tall, bitten under an elm like the prince’s kept thing.
Dunk’s hand came up, huge and shaking, and caught Aerion by the hair.
“No,” he said again, harsher. “Do not.”
Aerion froze.
For one terrible breath, Dunk thought he would do it anyway.
But the teeth did not close. Aerion held there, trembling with the want to do it, Dunk could feel the war in him, the jaw tight, the breath held, and then, the prince drew back.
His eyes were black. His mouth was red. He looked half-wild and half-affronted, as though Dunk had reached up and struck the crown from his head.
“You know what will happen if I don’t,” Aerion said.
Dunk’s throat worked under the place Aerion had almost marked.
“No.”
“You will smell of heat for days. Any fool with blood in him will know. They will not know you are taken.”
“I am not taken.”
Aerion smiled then, slow and dangerous.
“You say that with my knot still in you.”
Dunk's face burned.
“That does not make me yours.”
“No?” Aerion’s hand slid to Dunk’s jaw, forcing him to look. “What does, then?”
Dunk had no answer.
Aerion’s thumb moved over his cheek, almost gentle and therefore worse. “We will spend your heat together.”
“My prince—”
Dunk shook his head once. The movement was weak. He hated that.
Aerion watched him with sharp satisfaction. “You can scarce hold your eyes open, and still you argue.”
“You do not get to decide everything.”
“I have wanted a great many things in my life. I usually get them. You are going to be the most trouble, but I think that is rather the point.”
Dunk tried to glare at him.
Aerion looked pleased by the attempt.
“You will want it before the heat is done,” he said. “The bite. The mark. You will want every man who smells you to know he is too late.”
Dunk’s body answered with a low, shameful pull around him.
Aerion felt it.
His smile deepened.
"Your mouth is the only part of you that bothers to lie, and it does it badly."
“Stop talking.”
“No.”
Dunk shut his eyes.
Aerion’s hand moved to his belly, where the heat still coiled, quiet now but not gone. “Next time will be no rush in the wet grass,” he said, lower. “I will have you properly. A bed. A door that locks. As long as it takes.”
Dunk’s breath caught despite himself.
Aerion bent his head, near as he could come to Dunk’s ear without reaching for it, and his voice when it came was stripped of all its cruelty.
“You will carry my dragons,” he said. It was barely above a breath, and it sounded almost like a prayer.
The words went through him and lodged.
Dunk hated that they landed. Hated that some part of him, soft from heat and filled with the prince’s scent, turned toward them like a starving thing.
Aerion lifted his head.
“When it is done, I will take you to Summerhall.”
Dunk opened his eyes.
“I am a hedge knight.”
“Be my man, then.”
Dunk stared at him.
The words were ridiculous. Impossible. Worse than the bite, almost, because they sounded too much like something a better man might mean kindly.
“I will see you fed well,” the prince said. “Dressed well. Trained well. You will not skulk under trees like an animal, praying no one catches your scent.”
Dunk’s throat tightened.
“And your father?”
Aerion’s face hardened.
“I will talk with my father.”
That should have comforted no one.
It did not comfort Dunk.
Still, for one foolish heartbeat, he saw it: bread every day, boots that fit, a bed, a door that locked. A place where his heat would not mean hiding in the trees like a beaten dog — where it might mean this instead, the prince’s weight and the prince’s scent and the strange unkind care of him. Gods help him, but he found he wanted that part too.