Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

JON

In every death, there is an opportunity. To reflect, to forgive, to become new. Today, the opportunity is monetary. Mine is not the only mortuary in the small town of Winterfell, but it is the oldest and most trusted, thanks to the legacy of my late father and his father before him. In the years since Dad’s passing, I’ve made certain the reputation of his legacy never wavers. So, when news breaks that Mayor Lannister has succumbed to illness in the hospital of my own birth, I am honored with the responsibility of handling the prominent figure’s after-life affairs.

By the morning of the viewing, I am as sure as I can be everything will go off without a hitch. Tywin Lannister is laid in a suit of his family’s choosing, in a casket of our very finest quality, and organized peacefully with lifelike embalming and enough makeup to bring the color back to his features. It’s important to me that any decedent in my care is treated with the upmost respect, and that their loved ones may look upon them and see them as they lived.

The family arrives, and I stand by the door to greet and assure them I am at their beck and call through this troubling time.

“Thank you, Jon,” the greying Jaime Lannister says along with a firm handshake that negates the placid sadness in his eyes. He was my health teacher my freshman year of high school as well as my wrestling coach before I quit sports to apprentice with my father here, at the parlor.

It’s strange how roles can flip on a dime so easily, that now I am charged with guiding my former coach through his own turbulent milestone. But death is what I know. My mother died giving birth to me, my older brother died in a mugging when I was sixteen, and I watched my father lose his fight with cancer seven years after that. For each and every death, the Stark Family Mortuary handled them all until there was only one Stark left.

I shake the hand of each guest as they file into the viewing hall, periodically peaking through the double doors to ensure Miss Targaryen isn’t having trouble seating everyone. After two years, her capability shouldn’t come as a surprise, but she is the first non-Stark to work for the mortuary in almost a decade.

It was a difficult decision, bringing an outsider in, but the Targaryens are as established a family in this town as the Starks and Lannisters. Miss Targaryen had been in school with some of my younger cousins, and she was two years into a hospitality degree when she inquired about an internship. She was twenty then, but I saw her as a child. Now, at twenty-three, she is through with her degree, on my full-time payroll, and when her blue eyes catch mine from across the hall, my heart speeds like Mercury pulling closer and closer to the Sun.

As the viewing proceeds, it’s inevitable that Miss Targaryen and I should wind up beside each other, standing by the doors in case any last minute guests arrive or if a problem arises in the hall. By now, I should be used to the sweet scent Miss Targaryen spritzes on her clothes, but it has only ensured that if I am ever in a bakery, I think of her. I was not brought up to be an indulgent person, but I was born with a hunger that cannot always be tamped down. A slice of vanilla cake at the bakery from time to time won’t do much harm, but they do nothing to quench my cravings for the woman beside me now.

I keep my head straight, but from my peripheral, I know Miss Targaryen’s head is turned toward me. Sweat percolates down my spine, making my dress shirt and blazer feel stifling.

“You did a good job with today.” Her voice is hushed, a near whisper, and I know she isn’t smiling, because I taught her not to smile during a service. Paying me compliments during service is bad enough, but she must suppose we’re well enough out of the way that no one will notice.

As risky as it is to look into her eyes, it’s a struggle to keep from meeting them.

“I’m proud of you,” she says on a breath that fills my ears like an intoxicating vapor, blurring my vision for a moment while my mind goes to dangerous places. “Jon—” The gentle pressure of her hand touching my back may as well be an electrical shock to my veins. I flinch away, but mask my embarrassment by turning out of the doors to the foyer and slipping silently into the restroom.

A few minutes with my jacket off and my forehead sat on the lip of the pedestal sink should do me some good. I breathe toward the floor, willing my mind to think of anything besides Miss Targaryen. Not even the laundry list of reasons why she and I could never work do anything to soften the swell in my trousers.

I’m her employer.

We have nothing in common.

I spend more time with corpses than I do living people.

I desire her in ways that would send her running.

If I did not need her assistance so badly, I would fire her just to save myself the heartache of disappointing her. Or worse. . . the shame of disgusting her.

There’s a woman I have a standing, biweekly appointment with in the city. On her booking website, she calls herself a sex therapist, but anyone who has survived one of her sessions knows it’s much more involved than that. Hook-ups are as hard for me to initiate as a bona fide girlfriend, so my appointments with Madam Melisandre are all that tide me over when the cravings set in, but to say our sessions are wholly fulfilling is an overstatement. No matter how desperate I am for the release Madam provides, I know the hangover is an even crueler mistress.

Even so, I am seeing her tonight. I have to. In fact, I am going to speak to her about increasing our sessions to once per week. It will dip into my savings, but it’s either that or. . . I can’t think of the alternative without it spiraling into an uncontrollable fantasy, so I splash water on my face, put my jacket back on, and head back out to resume my job as a professional.

Time passes, the service concludes, and Miss Targaryen and I work in tandem to tidy up the hall once I’ve communicated with the Winterfell cemetery about the late mayor’s transportation to his final resting place. I stack the chairs while Miss Targaryen clears up any trash and leftover programs. I wipe down any hard surfaces and fixtures while Miss Targaryen runs the vacuum across the carpet. While she finishes up, I steal into my office to update my checklists and get paper work started for my other clients. All the while, I have an eye on the time, as my appointment is at seven o’clock sharp. With traffic, I should leave by six, just to be on the safe side.

When the time reaches five-thirty, I’m Mercury again. Miss Targaryen’s shift should have concluded at five, but here she is, quietly tapping on my open office door before stepping soundlessly across the carpet. I keep my eyes glued the spreadsheet drawn up on my monitor, but the rapid beat inside my chest distorts my focus.

“What are you still doing here?” I ask with a lump in my throat.

“I fixed you some tea.”

I look from my screen to the cup and dish in her two, delicate hands. I used to drink more coffee than water in a day, but ever since hiring Miss Targaryen, she’s insisted on fixing me tea instead. It bothered me in the beginning, but then it didn’t. Then, I began to enjoy it, even when I did not enjoy the tea itself. I have never requested tea from Miss Targaryen, but when she does deliver it, I become suddenly parched as if it’s the very thing my body requires.

Right now is no different. I salivate at the sight of the steam wafting up from one of my mother’s old teacups. Miss Targaryen holds it in front of her body, just below her chest, so it’s easy for my eyes to focus on the buttons of her white blouse and where they tug slightly over the swell of her breasts. A couple of buttons have come undone since the service earlier. No longer fastened to her throat, her blouse is now open enough to show a triangle of her fair sternum below a tantalizing collarbone.

“I, um—” My voice catches on that lump I’ve yet to swallow down as Miss Targaryen’s pink tongue peaks out to wet her lips.

My hand upon the computer mouse numbs as my heart pumps new blood below my belt, tightening my pants. Averting my eyes down to my desk, I say, “I have to finish up here quickly. I’ve an appointment to get to tonight, and I can’t be late.”

The silence between us as the clock on the wall ticks seconds off our lives makes me wonder if Miss Targaryen knows the nature of my appointments. I wouldn’t put it past her to know. Nothing about me ever seems to surprise her. Part of me hopes she does know. If she can still fix me tea even knowing what I get up to in my spare time, maybe some of my fears are unfounded. Maybe, Miss Targaryen truly is as open-minded as she claims.

When she finally speaks, it is after she sets the cup and dish in front of me, smack in the center of my eyeline so I cannot miss it. “I put something special in it for you.”

Something special?

Surprise negates the risk, and my chin springs up until I’m looking into Miss Targaryen’s soft, sapphire gaze. Everything about her is soft. Her fluffy, ivory-blonde hair she braids behind her back. Her unblemished face, lightly made-up with ever a blush on her cheeks. Her clothes that are always muted and modest. And her petite stature with curves I’m inexplicably drawn to despite being otherwise unimposing. By all outward appearances, Miss Targaryen is the epitome of gentleness. But despite all her delicate beauty, the energy she exudes wraps me in a vice grip stronger than I’ve ever felt. Not even Madam Melisandre with her bells, whistles and sultry bluster can compare to the power Miss Targaryen expresses with just one look, just one phrase, and just one cup of tea.

My eyelids flutter, escaping her power in an act of cowardice as I look back upon the teacup. My chest flutters and my dick hardens as I take my half-numb hand off my mouse and use it to lift the teacup to my lips. I drink it all in one go, ignoring the burn in my throat and focusing on the taste of whatever it is Miss Targaryen added. There are a hundred possibilities, but only a few would make me cum if only she had her hand in my pants while I sip.

When I’ve swallowed the lot down, I set the cup back upon the dish and say, “Thank you. . . Miss Targaryen.”

“I want you to skip your appointment tonight,” she says, “and take me out instead. There is a film playing at the theater on 8th Street I think you’ll enjoy.”

I shudder a sigh, nearly brave enough to meet her eye again. “I worry that’s not a good idea.”

“You worry too much.”

Yes. . . possibly, probably, but even so. . . I turn in my chair and put my focus back onto my work. “You should go home. You have the weekend off, I believe. Go enjoy it.”

“There are still things I need to get done for next week.”

“I don’t have the resources to pay you overtime.”

“When have I ever minded that?”

Back when I thought Miss Targaryen was simply hungry for experience, or a workaholic like me, I rejoiced in her willingness to linger off the books, but recently, I’ve caught on to her ulterior motives. This isn’t the first time she has expressed interest in spending time together outside the mortuary, but it is the first time she has stated it so clearly. When I hired her, she was timid verging on shy, but as she’s grown more direct, so has my infatuation with her.

What did she put in that tea?

But, she is not direct enough to insist I respond, and when I am silent long enough, she turns and leaves out my office door. I crank my head around just quick enough to catch a glimpse of her back cinched in that white blouse, her butt tucked into a black pencil skirt, down to her slim calves and her Mary Jane heels.

As it turns out, I am the timid one. No matter that I run my own business, that I’m respected by my community, and that I take care of my body and mind as well as my schedule allows. If I’m too afraid to ever give myself to a woman I don’t have to pay for the privilege, I’ll always be alone.

At a few minutes past six, I finally reach a natural stopping point in my work, and I scramble to get my desk in order and sneak out of here in time to hit the road. With my messenger bag slung over my shoulder, I head down the hall in favor of the foyer.

Popping open the right side of the heavy double doors, a biting chill breezes past my face, and it’s in that moment I hear Miss Targaryen behind me, speaking my name with a firmness that halts me before I can cross the threshold.

“Don’t go,” she says.

Holding my breath, I turn and find Miss Targaryen beside me now. Our eyes lock, and my skin perspires as Miss Targaryen puts her palm to the heavy wooden door and pushes it shut. I hear the padlock click into place, making me inhale quick.

“Dany, I have to—”

“Don’t call me that,” she says, voice low and rich as she stands close enough to deliver more of that vanilla cake scent into my flared nostrils. “I like it when you call me Miss Targaryen.”

I finally gulp that lump down my throat before dragging my tongue across my chapped lips. “Miss Targaryen, I—”

“Get on your knees.”

A startled moan escapes my sealed lips. I can’t possibly comply, though. Can I? Can I, please?

“Did you hear me?” she murmurs. “I told you to get on your knees.”

Losing myself in the blue of her eyes, I forget all about Madam Melisandre. I forget a lot of things, like all the reasons I’ve been moderating my urges around Miss Targaryen in the first place.

“Get on your knees, Jon.” One step shrinks the gap between us to a sliver. “Get on your knees, and I’ll give you a treat.”

The same treat she put in my tea? My cock grows uncomfortably stiff, defying the shrinking voice in my head telling me not to want this. I fear I’m well passed want, though. I need this, and so I sink slowly to my knees before my employee. My bag thunks on the carpet as I shrug it off my shoulder.

When Miss Targaryen’s fingers rake through my hair and across my scalp, it’s both soothing and teasing. Even if this is all she does to me, it will be worth missing my appointment.

“Good boy,” she says, her voice like a dreamsong as I lean my cheek against her flat tummy. For a time, we stay like this, her hands combing through my hair while I breathe in her girly scent. “Want your treat, puppy?”

“Yes, please,” I whisper, eyes half lidded. A soft tug on my hair leans me back, and I sit upon my heels so I can look up at Miss Targaryen’s face. So lovely and angelic, a Mona Lisa smile as she tells me to open my mouth.

I lick my lips before I do, my cock pulsing with anticipation.

Miss Targaryen cranes downward until her mouth is inches from mine. I watch her throat contract before my focus zeros on her parting lips. A cache of saliva spills from her mouth, drooling onto my tongue and filling my mouth.

When her lips close, so do mine, and I swallow all that she gifted me. The immediate soothing effect it has on my gut is blissful. My eyes blur with a joyful mist as I say, “Thank you, Miss Targaryen.”

The slightest hint of a smirk tugs at her mouth before her hands leave my hair and her adorable heels carry her away from me. Out of her immediate gravity, I put my hands to the floor, so suddenly lonesome I almost beg. But, her actions strike me speechless. She stops before the wingback sofa against the foyer wall, turns to face me, then bunches her skirt up past her thighs and hips to reveal a pair of skimpy, pink panties.

This isn’t the first time I’ve crossed the employer-employee line with Miss Targaryen, but we’ve never done anything a normal person would consider sex. We’ve never touched each other or undressed for each other. For a long time, I’ve wondered what sort of underwear Miss Targaryen hides under her sensible skirts and pants, and now I know. Now I know. And when she hooks her thumbs under her panties and pushes them down her legs, I discover how neatly trimmed she keeps her pale blonde pubic hair.

With her skirt gathered around her waist, she sits upon the edge of the chair, parts her knees and reclines all the way back. Her curling finger coaxes me forward as a sultry tone commands me to crawl to her.

With abandon, I totter on hands and knees across the foyer, aiming for the glistening pinkness between Miss Targaryen’s thighs. But as soon as I’m near enough to smell her arousal in the air, she lifts the toe of her shoe under my chin, stopping me in my tracks.

“You have to earn your treats, puppy,” she says.

I gulp and sit back on my heels, allowing Miss Targaryen’s foot to drift into my lap. Her sole presses against the tent in my pants, teasing me with just the right bit of pain.

When I said I’d never touched Miss Targaryen, it wasn’t entirely true. A time before, I had wound up on my knees for her, drawn to her feet she said ached after a long work day. I do now what I did then and slip the black heel off her slender foot to cradle it in my hands. The pumpkin colored paint on her toes is too precious, I tip my head down to kiss each nail, something I’d never dared do before.

Her foot is small and narrow. I massage it like it’s delicate, because it is, and as soon as Miss Targaryen is purring, I switch to her other foot and pay it same treatment. Her toes curling makes me think of sex, which reminds me of hers, and I zero my gaze back between her legs as I lift her foot and take her toes into my mouth.

“Good puppy,” she breathes, hands feeling her own body over her blouse. As I drag my tongue along the side of her arch, her fingers commit to plucking open her blouse. Her bra is thin enough I can just make out the shape of her hardened nipples through pastel-pink lace.

Puppy. She’s never called me that before tonight. No one’s ever called me that before. Madam Melisandre calls me slave, which is stimulating in the moment but makes the hangover worse when I stop feeling horny and start hating myself instead. Will I hate myself tomorrow, when the high of this subsides?

Miss Targaryen slips her foot from my mouth to spread her knees wide. Before my eyes, her pussy blooms, and the sheen of dew glistening from her petals has me panting. Two fingers in a downward V pry her outer labia farther apart, pronouncing a small, reddened clitoris.

“You wanna lick my pussy, puppy?” she asks, her other hand reaching out for me.

“Yes,” I answer desperately, leaning close enough for Miss Targaryen to slip her hand behind my head and fist my tousled curls.

She holds me back before my mouth can reach nirvana, her other hand petting those two fingers along her wet folds and that raging clit. “Yes, what?”

“Yes, please,” I beg, flitting my eyes from her pussy to the awestruck look across her face, her dreamy eyes twinkling like a starry night.

“What about your appointment?”

A pathetic, mousy whimper seeps up my throat. “Please, Miss Targaryen. I want you so bad. I will do anything.”

“Shh.” She loosens her hold on my hair to pet my crown. “It’s okay, puppy. I know what you need. You need to belong to someone. I want you to belong to me.”

My heart skips with equal parts anxiety and elation. Even if my dazed mind could conjure a string of words that make sense, it doesn’t matter when Miss Targaryen takes her fingers off her sex and presses them between my slacked lips.

We can’t, I should say, but won’t. I’m too busy sucking the tangy juice off her fingers to speak a word. And the truth is, I want to be hers. I’ve wanted to be hers for months, ever since the first time she ran her fingers through my hair while I innocently fixed the buckle on her shoe.

Her fingers leave my mouth, and both hands are behind my head now, pulling me down until my nose is nestled in her pubic hair and my mouth latches to her silken flesh. She’s a well of arousal, already vibrating beneath me.

“Oh my God,” she moans as I nurse from her clit. I tug it between my lips and tickle it with the tip of my tongue. “ That’s it. Mmm, such a good pussy eater. You’re gonna make me cum so fast.”

As badly as I want to experience her unraveling, I steal a morsel of control and part from her clit to dip my tongue through her gooey slit. I lap at her labia and pump my tongue through her channel, drawing out more fluid to slurp down. I dip lower and lick clear the wetness dripping down her asshole, and I stay there for a minute, tracing her pucker and reveling in the debauchery of it.

A whimpering moan morphs into Miss Targaryen’s wanton affirmations. “You like licking my ass, don’t you? I knew you were a hungry puppy.”

My cock rages in my pants, but I dare not touch myself. It’s not punishment I fear, as no rules have been established yet, but it’s wasting my pleasure on my hand before discovering what all Miss Targaryen has in store. The more Miss Targaryen teases me with her sopping pussy and wicked words, the tighter my ball cinch, threatening an early climax.

Her butt lifts off the cushion as I touch my tongue back to her clit, and she rolls her hips like she wants to fuck my mouth with her pussy. She calls me puppy, but I eat her like a famished beast, slurping, sucking, nibbling her labia and gnawing at her inner thighs. I lick her from taint to clit and growl as I devour that rigid nub.

“Fuck!” Miss Targaryen caws as the quiver in her legs overtakes her whole body. Curse words had seldom graced my younger employee’s voice, but now she strings them together like charms on a collar fitted to my size. “Fuck, fuck, shit! Don’t stop, puppy! I’m so fucking close!”

I’m near to blowing in my pants without any manual stimulation at all as Miss Targaryen succumbs to a convulsive orgasm against my mouth, coating my mouth and chin in her fresh juices.

Her curses turn to a jumble of moans and cries, and I do not suppose this mortuary has encountered so much life in all its century of business. Moans turn to groans and cries turn to gasps. Her hips flinch against my tongue, but her hand holds my head steady between her thighs. I lick her engorged clit until she’s mewling again, making more noise than I thought her capable. When I latch on and suckle, she gasps so hard the sound lodges in her throat.

Finally, she tugs my head up and hugs her arms around my neck to draw me against her chest. With my face in her heaving cleavage, I nuzzle a supple breast. She tugs aside her bra cup, freeing her breast and a pink, budded nipple that my mouth naturally gravitates toward.

“Dear God, puppy,” she coos. “How did I know you’d be such a good boy?”

I pop my mouth off her nipple and tilt my chin to look into her eyes. Maybe it’s different for women than for men, but there’s no post-orgasm regret anywhere in her expression. If anything, she still appears lustful.

Her teeth rake her bottom lip before she murmurs, “Come lay on my lap.”

When I stand, my knees wobble like jelly. More embarrassed by my perspiration than the tent in my pants, I strip out of my blazer before dropping my ass to the cushion beside Miss Targaryen and reclining back across her thighs. She cradles my head in the crook of her arm, drawing my face back to her tit. I nurse from it as my hand kneads the opposite breast through the unpadded lace.

“That’s it, sweet boy,” Miss Targaryen purrs more enchanting declarations. She must be seasoned in this sort of domination, because it comes as naturally to her as submission comes to me. But I’ve never submitted quite like this. Sometimes, I wonder if I’ve ever truly submitted at all, when it was only my loins making all of the commitments, never my heart.

Even now. . . just as we are on this sofa. . . it is the very first time I have ever cuddled with a woman.

I feel the tug of my belt and the drag of my fly’s zipper. I moan around Miss Targaryen’s nipple as her hand worms inside the opening of my boxers and fishes my cock through it.

Women have gasped at my cock before but only before berating me for it’s average size. In my teen years, I’m ashamed to say, I got off on such ridicule and even requested it from women I surreptitiously roleplayed with online. If Miss Targaryen were to degrade me now, I would surely bust and thank her for the privilege. But to be humiliated by her specifically may be too much to bear in the end.

Dragging her fingertip along the underside of my erection, she says, “You never told me you had such a pretty cock. Why have you been keeping this from me?”

My answer is a low whimper as Miss Targaryen tickles my slit with the soft side of her fingertip. My toes curl inside my shoes as soon as her warm hand dresses my shaft in a loose fist.

“Open, puppy.”

Tilting away from her breast, I part my lips wide and accept another pour of Miss Targaryen’s saliva onto my tongue. This time, I hold it in my mouth, savoring it as the hand around my cock begins a featherlight stroke, barely enough to move my foreskin.

It takes but a dozen of these agonizing strokes for stars to burst behind my eyelids, and I climax with my mouth full and my legs twitching. Under the sound of my rapid breaths and my heart thumping in my ear, Miss Targaryen’s heavenly voice exalts, “So much cum! My goodness, puppy! How long have you been carrying all this around? It’s no wonder you were so desperate. I wish you would’ve told me.”

A few more strokes eases me through my orgasm until my body melts and I finally swallow. I peel my eyelids open just in time for Miss Targaryen’s hand to leave my cock in favor of slipping her painted fingers into her mouth. Madam Melisandre once joked that my spunk tasted like milk of magnesia, but Miss Targaryen laps my load from her hand like it’s tapioca pudding.

Before I can say something I shouldn’t, I sit up beside Miss Targaryen and fix my dick back where it belongs. As soon as my belt is buckled, I stand and snatch my jacket up from the floor. I head for my bag next, toppled over in front of the door.

“Jon.”

I turn around to find Miss Targaryen standing now, tugging her skirt back into place. With her blouse half undone and her breast still propped out of her bra, she looks like sex. Our sex. Even with her orgasm drying on my short beard, it’s an impossible concept to comprehend.

She fixes her bra while holding my stare. “The movie starts at ten. Pick me up at nine.”

“Miss Targaryen. . .” Like a coward, I look away, at the carpet with fibers of burgundy and copper. “This was very unprofessional.”

“Yes, it was.” She walks forward, coming back into my vision with her blouse buttoned to her collar. My hand flinches by her touch, a reflex that doesn’t deter my employee. She laces our fingers together and smooths her thumb across my skin. “Do you have my address?”

After a beat, I nod. “I’m sure I have it written down somewhere.”

“I will text it to you, just in case.”

“I don’t really. . . watch films.”

“That’s perfect then. You won’t have already seen this one.”

Astounding myself with the ease at which I’m able to look Miss Targaryen in the eyes, I ask, “Is this a date?”

“It better be,” she murmurs, a deceptively bashful smile playing on her face. “I’m going to wear a dress, and I hope you’ll like it.”

A dress? The corners of my own mouth tug at the thought. “I’m sure I will.”

Chapter Text

DANY

My friends think I’m strange for working here. They think I’m strange regardless, but it adds a morbid flavor to my strangeness that I work at the Stark Family Mortuary. When I initially inquired about an internship three years ago, Mom and Dad – but Mom especially – thought it a bad idea. Some around town think the Starks are cursed, but seeing as Jon is the only Stark left, what they really mean is Jon’s cursed.

I don’t believe my boss is cursed, but even if he were, I’m not afraid of it. Death has never frightened me as much as it does most, and maybe that’s why I’m able to work in a place that has at least one corpse stored in the cellar at all times. Maybe that’s why I’ve become such a hedonist. Life is fleeting for us all. Jon is nearly eight years older, but the fates wouldn’t mind snuffing me out tomorrow and allowing him another sixty years if it’s written in their stars.

If Jon prescribed to the same philosophy, maybe it would not have taken him three years to submit to me. He must think the ghosts filling this place mind what he does in his free time, because he does it thirty minutes out of town and doesn’t tell a soul.

These haunted halls don’t bother me none. I walk through them every morning with music playing through my earbuds while I stow my purse in my desk, put a kettle on in the kitchen and trapse down into the underbelly to greet my early-bird boss. Before I turn into the lab, I pocket my earbuds, replacing a pop beat with the stale whirl of the air conditioner and clanking of Jon’s tools on a tin tray.

Though I’m not afraid of curses, death or ghosts, my stomach is more squeamish than that, so I avert my gaze away from the old woman lain lifeless on the steel table while I bid Jon good morning.

“Good morning, Miss Targaryen.” Seldom does Jon Stark utter a purposeless word. My name in his deep tenor always puts an uneven thump into my chest, because I know he wouldn’t call me Miss unless he respected me.

Trailing my eyes across the floor, I find his brown shoes and follow his smartly dressed body all the way up to a pensive stare. I’ve always been a sucker for dark eyed men, but Jon’s are a special kind. All warmth and mystery without any of the danger. More caution than any man I’ve met, and it’s his unnerving caution which only reels me deeper into his atmosphere. It isn’t so much I wish to tear down his walls, more so that I wish to carve a door into them in which only I hold the key.

Come out and play, puppy. My loins ache to command him to his knees, but Jon is still my employer. Begrudgingly, so long as I am clocked in, that dynamic must take precedent over lust.

Still, I blush under his gaze, recalling Friday evening and the night which followed. I’m not sure which memory my body responds to more – when Jon’s knees touched the floor for me or when he kissed me under the street lamp outside the 8th Street theater.

“Did you have a nice weekend?” Jon asks.

Had Jon not insisted upon working Saturday morning, I would have demanded he stay the night after our date, but I don’t think Jon has taken a morning off since his father passed.

“Yes, very. I went out with some friends on Saturday and had brunch with my family on Sunday,” I answer, fisting my hands inside my cardigan pockets. It’s cold down here. The white lights make Jon’s already fair complexion nearly vampiric, and it makes me want to steal him off to a beach somewhere that’s still warm. “I’m about to fix some tea. I’ll bring you a cup.”

Behind Jon’s otherwise neutral expression is a flash of worry I’ve come to interpret as arousal. “Thank you.”

Holding back a smirk, I turn out of the doorway, but Jon’s voice draws me back before I’ve made a full step.

“Miss—” He stops there, seemingly shaken when our eyes meet again. Smoothing his palms down his apron, he says, “There’s a client scheduled for nine-thirty this morning. . .”

“I’ll take care of it.”

He doles out another, “Thank you,” and it stirs a wicked thought inside me that my puppy could manage just fine if thank you, were the only two words he were ever permitted to speak.

Studying my well-mannered boy, with his shirt sleeves rolled to the elbows and his collar button undone. I can’t help the steam percolating between my thighs. I should have worn pants, or at least underwear that wouldn’t soak through at my first fleeting fantasy of the day. “You look very handsome today,” I tell him, knowing exactly what he’ll say in return.

“Thank you.” What I do not expect, is that after a purposeful swallow, he says, “And, you look. . . beautiful. As always.”

Despite the stale smell of formaldehyde in the air, and the corpse dressed only in a sheet beside me, I cross the room and reach for Jon’s neck. Slipping my hand to back of his head, I bring our lips together in a kiss not unlike the one Jon paid me last night. As innocent a kiss as I’ve ever given, despite my lecherous thoughts.

Our mouth part with a cute sticking sound, like they’d rather stay glued together all day, but there’s work to be done, and Jon takes too much pride in this place for me to derail his routine too much.

“The pins in your hair,” Jon says. “They’re pink.”

I slip my hand from his neck and touch one of the bobby pins helping keep my braid prim. “I lost all my black ones. I can run to the drug store and buy more if you think it’s too inappropriate.”

He blinks and shakes his head. “No. It’s alright. It’s hardly noticeable.”

Nodding, I give him a parting peck on the cheek before going to start on tea.

Two hours pass of tedious yet necessary work until the security bell chimes through the back portion of the parlor, and I head to the foyer to greet my nine-thirty appointment. Ever since becoming full-time, Jon has allowed me to take appointments on my own. It’s a break for him and a treat for me, so it all works out well in the end. Still, clients will frequently sigh in disappointment when I introduce myself to them. They expect a Stark – this is the Stark Family Mortuary after all. They certainly do not expect a Targaryen, let alone a twenty-three year old girl with pink bobby pins in her hair.

“You’re Aerys Targaryen’s girl,” the older clients will say. “You’re Visery Targaryen’s little sister,” the Millennial clients will say. Out of towners unfamiliar with Winterfell families will sometimes ask if I am Mr. Stark’s daughter, until I inform them Mr. Stark is only thirty years old. Then, they will ask if I am Jon’s wife, and I have to fold my lips to keep from grinning at the notion.

My vanilla friends balk at my fixation with the reclusive mortician, while my debaucherous friends tease me for how patient I’ve been with him. There isn’t another domme among my social circles who has taken three years to earn submission, but it’s easier for women in the city to find the one. It isn’t as though I can advertise myself in sleepy Winterfell as a Mistress in search of her prized pet.

Besides my closest friends, Jon is the only person in this town who knows of my proclivities now, and I suspect I might be one of the only people in the world outside a dominatrix’s dungeon to know of his. When I’d accidently skimmed his email inbox on a day when he forgot to log out of the front desk computer, I almost couldn’t believe it. I’d already sussed out several submissive qualities to his personality, but I had no idea how realized it was until I saw the evidence in emails from fetish sites and correspondences between him and multiple professional dommes.

It’s never been just about sex for me, though. Not with Jon. A sub, I can find in a day. A decent sub, I can find with a few week’s effort. A great sub takes as much work as it is to find a boyfriend. But, the one. . . The one takes patience and understanding, and that’s what my friends don’t understand.

When I discovered Jon’s biweekly therapy sessions were actually visits to Madam Melisandre, I nearly put in my two-weeks notice. After all my painstakingly subtle efforts, I’m ashamed to say, I felt scorned. Cheated on, even, because my heart was already invested. But then I took a breath, and I reminded myself it’s not Jon’s fault he hadn’t yet seen in me what I saw in him.

“And, here we have the Signature Series of Ashwoods—” As I wander down the row, motioning toward the Ashwood collection of luxury caskets, Missus Frey interrupts me with a scoff.

“Good Lord, do people really spend so much on a box that’s just going to be buried underground?” she balks.

She’s not the first to do so, but for every dozen clients who joke about who in their right mind would throw ten grand at a casket, there’s a client who believes their loved one is deserving of the most expensive casket available.

“This is our most extravagant option,” I agree.

Missus Frey studies the display with amusement. “If my kids waste this much on a casket for me when I croak, I’ll rise up from my grave just to slap them stupid.” Despite the incredulous smile Missus Frey pays me, there’s still that same grief behind her eyes that most clients arrive here with. “Be honest, Dany. If it were your funeral, what sort of box would you want your family to stuff you in.”

The question feels unseemly, though it’s one I’ve gotten before. Jon has told me that the best response is to evade the question entirely. It’s not right to push my own biases onto grieving families when they’re making such difficult decisions.

“Go on,” Missus Frey presses, gripping my forearm and imploring me with sleep-deprived eyes. “Hypothetically. You do this for a living. Surely, you’ve thought on it.”

“Well. . .” I absentmindedly touch the pin keeping stray hairs behind my ear. “Personally, I’d prefer to be cremated.”

“Yeah,” Missus Frey sighs, swerving around to wander back toward the more modest options. “If only my father had been that sensible, but he’d haunt me the rest of my life if I even think it.”

A shadow in the doorway draws my head to turn, and I find Jon watching me. He’s left his apron downstairs, buttoned his sleeve cuffs and his collar, and donned his suit jacket that emphasizes his broad shoulders and tapered waist. His hands in the pockets of his tailored pants draw my eye to the brown belt that matches his brown shoes. When I pick my eyes back up, Jon moves his mouth to silently ask me if I’m alright here. I nod, and he turns around, the slit in his jacket just wide enough to display how fitted his pants are around his cute butt.

“Oh, puppy,” I breathe, watching him walk away.

“Sorry?” Missus Frey’s voice tugs me out of another fantasy.

Sending her a sympathetic smile, I answer, “Mahogany. You cannot go wrong with mahogany.”

For lunch, I pop down to the sandwich shop on the corner – my usual spot when I’m too lazy to pack a lunchbag. I offered to pick something up for Jon, too, and he slipped me his credit card before I left. I place our usual order then pass the Capitol One card to Meera over the counter.

“I heard a rumor about you,” Meera says with a sneaky side-eye and pursed lips as she runs Jon’s card.

“Oh?” I raise a brow, not about to give up the ghost until I have a little more info to go off of. Meera and I went to school together but we weren’t friends in a way where I could tell her my deep, dark secrets.

“You and Jon Stark. . .” She smirks, wagging a brow down at the card she hands back to me that has Jon’s name printed on the face. “Heard you two are a thing now.”

A thing is only scratching the surface of what I want Jon and I to be, but the phrase still has me blushing. A wicked tug at the corner of my mouth gives me away instantly.

“So, it’s true,” Meera’s eyes widen salaciously. “He’s pretty weird, though, don’t you think? Playing with dead bodies all day. . .”

The word weird has me feeling defensive, but I tamp down my inner bitch and joke, “Well, now he has a living body to play with.”

“You’re bad, Dany,” she snickers before handing me my ticket and saying my order will be right up.

While I wait I’m giddy, and I stay that way as I walk back to the mortuary. My teeth chatter from the breeze, but the shiver in my spine is pure excitement. I’m still grinning when I get to the kitchen and unpack our lunches. I set the table with a couple cold waters from the fridge. Jon doesn’t drink as much water in a day as he should, though you wouldn’t know it by the amount of cum he unloaded into my hand on Friday. If I can get him onto a two-liter per day plan, I can’t fathom how much semen he’ll produce, but I need to find out.

I peel the lid off Jon’s hot tomato soup and stage it beside his grilled cheese. Comfort food for a boy who deserves all the comfort he can stomach. It pains me how starved for affection he is. No one so selfless, sweet and sexy should ever be deprived.

Leaning over his soup, I empty my mouth of saliva into the russet puree then stir it all up with a spoon from the drawer.

Jon walks in, breezing to the sink to wash up, and my heart flutters while I wait for him to join me at the table. When he does, I hand his credit card over, and he thanks me for making the trip. First thing he touches as soon as his card is back in his wallet is that soup spoon. Giving his soup a few extra stirs, he eyes me with a small half-smile. “Did you put something in it?”

I’m so happy, I almost laugh. Picking at my chicken cobb salad, I answer, “Just, a little treat for my puppy.”

His lifted brows and parted lips is a glorious view. My pussy trickles fresh arousal into my already sodden panties as Jon brings a scoopful to his mouth and slurps it all down.

It’s impossible to keep the smile off my face. Simply being in the same room as Jon is one of my greatest pleasures. His presence thickens the air, creating it’s own cozy atmosphere fit for two. No outsiders allowed. Feels like high school, this crush I’ve nurtured into a consuming obsession. I want to draw my name all over his body like pages in a notebook.

Jon breaks a short silence with a cautious question. “So, you’re alright then? After Friday?”

Friday. Oh, what a day.

“Of course. Are you?”

“I—” He cuts himself off, cheeks blushing like he’s too bashful to speak his mind. Instead, he asks, “Did you mean what you said to Missus Frey? That you’d rather be cremated?”

Some might find this a morbid detour, but morbid is par for the coarse with Jon, and one of the things I adore about him. “Yes, I think so. I don’t like the idea of decomposing. I’d rather be incinerated than decompose, and I despise the thought of being embalmed. I hope that’s not offensive.”

“Not at all.” He dips the crust of his sandwich into his soup. “Ironically, I don’t enjoy the idea of being embalmed either, but I don’t mind decomposition. I’d look forward to it, actually, becoming part of the earth. A shroud should do, and a deep enough hole.”

My lecherous nature could conjure a number of innuendos about a deep enough hole, but I keep myself composed and offer only a small smirk. “Okay. If you die first, I’ll see to it.”

“Thank you,” Jon says, but the dimming of his countenance is worrisome. A fallen smile chews on a small bite of bread, and I wonder if perhaps Jon believes in the curse too. He may not mind decomposition, but no one wishes to pass before their time, and I’ll be damned if I let Jon go until he’s old and ready.

“Jon. If you’re ever not alright, you can tell me. I’d want you to tell me.”

A sober nod makes way for a confession. “I’ve just never really done this before.”

“Done what?”

“Have sex with someone I see all the time. Someone. . . I care about.”

I hook my ankles under my chair to keep from springing up and attacking Jon with a bear hug and a million kisses. “So, you liked the movie then?”

Smile returning in full force, Jon answers, “I liked seeing it with you.”

All day, gravity is against me. Any time I stand from my desk chair, the fluid pooled in the fibers of my panties threatens to drip down my thigh. Multiple trips to the restroom are temporary fixes quickly undone the next time I pass Jon in the hall, run into him in the kitchen, or hear his drawl through the landline. During a brief break from tedious office work, I do some incognito web-browsing that only worsens my condition.

I punch out in the final minute of my eighth hour with a kettle close to boiling in the kitchen. I fix two cups and set them on two dishes with two spoons for stirring, then take both with me down the hall and into Jon’s office at the very end.

Adorably, Jon is nose deep in his massive ledger leftover from his father’s technophobic ways of storing data. Jon had adapted to the digital age against Mr. Stark’s influence, but an inherited paranoia causes him to back everything up in writing.

I linger a bit in the doorway, smiling when his box frame glasses slip down his nose and he pushes them back up with his pointer finger. Then, I cross the floor and set one cup just beside the ledger on his left hand side.

The clink of the tea dish settling on the desktop refocuses Jon’s attention, and he peaks at the cup then up at me, watching as I sip gingerly from my own cup. He lays his pen into the crease of his ledger, removes his readers, and reclines to blink those black, curly lashes up at me. Fingers grazing his tea cup handle, he asks, “Did you put something in it?”

“Would you like me to put something in it?”

A flash of anxiety crosses his face. “Y—yes, please.”

A soft, reflexive moan rumbles in the base of my throat as I set my tea cup onto it’s dish. “I love it when you say please.”

“I love it when you say. . . anything.”

Butterflies erupt in my tummy, disrupting my equilibrium enough that I feel suddenly faint. Like I could swoon across Jon’s lap and die happy. Instead, I set my tea upon the desk and step back. Under Jon’s focused stare, I hike a heel onto Jon’s chair cushion, in the triangle of space between his legs.

Jon’s knees spread wider, his hips shifting until his bulge is pressed against the rounded toe of my shoe. Holding my puppy’s lustful gaze, I lift the small stirring spoon from his tea dish and sneak it between my thighs. With my other hand, I tug my panties aside, making room to dip the narrow spoon through my slit. The metal feels cold, but my pussy heats it in seconds as I fuck myself shallowly.

“Oh my God,” Jon breathes, his hands closing around my ankle while he stares at my crotch.

Drawing out the spoon, I reach it into Jon’s tea and give it a few purposeful stirs. A bead of arousal crawls down my inner thigh as I ask my puppy, “What do you say?”

After a hard swallow, he says, “Thank you, Miss Targaryen,” before lifting the tea cup to his lips. He watches me while he sips, and when he’s had his fill, I fix my panties and lower my heel to the floor.

I turn for the door, content to leave Jon to his work now that a piece of me is swimming through his body, but he quickly steals my wrist before I make it more than a step away.

“Wait.” Jon’s hand slips effortlessly to cradle my hand in his as I turn back around. “You’re buckle is undone.”

Looking down at my heels, I see my puppy is correct. Now how could that have happened? My heart palpates as Jon kicks his rolling chair back and lowers to his knees. Sitting on his heels and folding down toward my heel, he fiddles with the ankle strap and fixes the buckle. When he sits up, I thread my fingers through his neatly kempt hair and break the gel enough to return some bounce to his curls.

“Such a good boy,” I murmur.

Jon’s hands linger on my ankle, rambling a slow path up my calf and knee and beneath the hem of my skirt. He strokes my inner thigh where my wetness ran free, gently kneading my sensitive muscle.

“See what you do to me? I’ve wanted to touch you all day.”

“You have?” The depth of his voice is as hypnotizing as the innocent look in his eyes. Had he truly never had passionate sex before? Had it only ever been superficial? Transactional?

“I want to make you mine, puppy,” I say, the ease of my voice negating how erratic my anxious heart thumps. “Would you like that?”

Jon’s hand reaches the sodden gusset of my panties, and it takes all of my restraint not to claim him right here and now. Seeing Jon so overwhelmed by curiosity and lust is more pleasure than a quick fuck could ever produce. “I. . . I’m your boss.”

Does he know that statement only makes me hornier? Holding back a moan, I inch my feet apart enough for Jon’s fingers to trace the crease of my lips. “I would quit right now if it meant I could have you.”

“Don’t quit,” he says, nearly begging, and it looks so good on him. “I need you, Miss Targaryen. Your contributions over the past three years have been immeasurable. And. . .”

I graze my thumb across Jon’s short whiskers, keeping his head tilted so I can study the silver flecks in his grey eyes. “And?”

The walls of this century-old building creak around us as the wind blows outside single pane windows. It’s an eerie sound I’ve grown used to. I even find comfort in it now, because it reminds me of Jon. In a husky, haunting whisper, Jon confesses, “And, you are. . . incredible.”

“Oh, puppy.” My hips sway forward and back, riding the tips of Jon’s fingers as they nuzzle into the seam of my panties. I forget to swallow when he itches my clit. I press my thumb on Jon’s chin until his lips are parted wide, and I lean down enough to spit into his mouth without missing. Before he can swallow, I lean farther down and fill his mouth with my tongue so he can suck down every bit of my taste. The opposite of this morning, Jon kisses me like he’s eating my pussy, nursing from the tip of my tongue like it’s the raging nub his fingers dance across like teasing feathers.

I slurp my tongue back into my own mouth and swallow. “Are you trying to make your Mistress cum? I’ve been on the edge all day because of you.”

A clipped moan escapes Jon’s throat, and I notice his other hand has slipped from my ankle to knead the bulge in his trousers.

Nostrils flared, I chastise him. “Did I say you could touch yourself?”

The speed at which Jon’s hand flies off his erection nearly does me in. There’s nothing more erotic than a man’s unwavering obedience, but I do enjoy my pets scrappy. “Good boy.” I pet him from the top of his head to the nape of his neck in long sweeps. “Your cock is mine now, and no one is allowed to touch my things except me. Is that clear?”

Moaning through a nod, Jon sits a bit lower, knees widening, stretching the fabric of his pants over his jutted tool. It’s adorable in it’s wickedness, and just insubordinate enough to make me want to teach him a lesson. When a finger sneaks under my panties to wiggle through my slit, I realize how green Jon remains despite his rendezvous with Madam Melisandre. Or, maybe his zeal is just for me. Maybe he desires to be broken in as badly as he needs it.

I snatch his wrist before he breaches me fully, tsking at his audacity. “I didn’t hear you ask if you could fuck me, puppy.”

“Please?” he asks, pouted lips still glistening with my spit and his.

“Please what?”

“Please, can I fuck you, Miss Targaryen?”

My thighs shiver, so close that a gust of wind in the right place would do me in. This is possibly the first time I’ve heard Jon curse, and it only makes me want to jump his bones more. But I steel myself while I tell Jon what sort of woman his new owner is. “I’m the one who fucks you, puppy. No the other way around. Do you understand?”

A flash of eager worry darkens his eyes, and it takes only a beat before he nods.

“That’s my good boy.” Giving him more pets, I ask, “You like being fucked, don’t you?”

This time, there isn’t one sliver of time between my question and Jon’s willing nod.

Skating my palms down the sides of Jon’s face, I zero my gaze on his plump lips and the coarse whiskers surrounding them. My hands drop to his shoulders and with minimal pressure, I coax him to his back between the wall and his desk. I shove his rolling chair so hard it smacks the adjacent bookshelf, knocking loose a few papers to flutter to the carpet. It pleases me when Jon doesn’t protest to the mess, and it pleases me even further that he spreads his legs for me when I lower myself above him.

Even so, it turns my stomach to think another woman may have taken Jon’s virginity already, especially if that woman was Madam Melisandre, but I refuse to be a jealous owner. Whether Jon has been claimed before or not, they never owned him. Not really. If they had, he wouldn’t be whimpering into my mouth and squeezing my waist. He wouldn’t be hard as a damn rock under my pelvis while I lick his tongue to the rhythm of my hips grinding between his thighs.

The defiant buck of his hips makes me think he’s as close as I am, though his cock is still trapped in the confines of his clothes. Desperate for a second look at my new plaything, I crawl down Jon’s body until I’m sat between his legs, and I tug at his belt strap until it unfastens. I unzip his pants and spelunk for his cock until it’s projected through his fly. Thick and veiny, average length but with a fat, blushing crown already slick with precum. Puckering my lips, I crane downward, but stop an inch short of kissing his blinking slit and blow a steady stream of warm air across it instead. Just that has Jon mewling and his cock twitching.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more beautiful cock,” I murmur before spitting over the pulsing bullseye below me. It all rolls down his shaft to wet his fly.

“Please,” Jon pants, half-lidded eyes glued to my face.

“You want to cum, puppy?” I coo.

“Mhm.”

“You know the rules. You have to earn your treats.” I skate a palm up Jon’s inner thigh, stopping just shy of his balls, still trapped under two layers of fabric. I’m tempted to tuck my thumb under his scrotum just to see how used to the sensation he is, but I still have a little bit of patience left in me. “You have to let me fuck your pretty face before you get to cum.”

“Yes, please,” he breathes with an air of delirium I find intoxicating.

Crawling back up his body, I detour at his ear, kiss the lobe and whisper, “I want you to put your hands on my ass, and don’t you dare move either of them until I’ve finished.”

His hot palms glide up my thighs and grip each of my butt cheeks under my skirt.

“I’ll tell you what,” I murmur. “If you can cum before I do, without me touching you at all, I’ll put your cock in my mouth.”

With Jon too dumbstruck to respond, I continue my journey up his body until my knees are on either side of his head, and my pussy hovers inches above his mouth. Gripping the lip of his desk for support, I sit my cunt under his nose and feel a rigid tongue already prodding my thinly veiled clit.

“Fuck,” I moan, lulling my head back as I roll my hips and grind my desperate clit on my pet’s hot mouth.

I reach down past my bunched skirt and tug my panties aside again. Jon’s moans muffle within my spread labia as I hump his mouth like I could fill it with just my little, raging clitoris. Sometimes, I wish I had a real cock so I could know how it feels to grind all those many nerve endings against the back of a man’s throat, but I could never live without my pussy.

“You feel so good,” I moan, releasing Jon’s desk to squeeze my tit through my blouse and bra. Reveries flood my mind of Jon’s magical mouth suckling my nipple the way he’s slurping at my clit now, and when I pinch my areola I can almost pretend Jon’s mouth is two places at once. “You like that, puppy? You like it when I fuck your mouth with my clit?”

Like a good boy, Jon’s hands never part from my ass. Part of me wouldn’t mind it if he spanked me, just so I can punish him. Maybe refuse to let him cum at all. But then I wouldn’t get to see his glorious expulsions or watch his body quiver as he succumbs. I wouldn’t get to feel the heat of his girthy tool pulsing in my hand. No, I could never deny my puppy his orgasm. I crave it as much as I crave my own.

With a look over my shoulder, I’m enraptured by the sight of Jon’s cock bobbing over his lap, a rope of either precum or my saliva tethering his tip to his twill pants. Oh what I wouldn’t give to put a collar around that cock. Property of Miss Targaryen.

The swirl of Jon’s tongue countercurrent to my hips’ gyrations makes for the perfect tempo, and I quickly grab the desk again before euphoria knocks me off balance. “Yes, yes, yes!” I press my eyes shut, body sizzling with erupting pleasure as I ride my puppy’s skilled mouth to climax. “Oh fuck, baby, I’m gonna—nnnngh!” The word catches in my throat, becoming a guttural moan louder than the howling, October wind.

Caught in a frenzied climax, I mash my cunt under Jon’s nose, reveling in the tickle of his short beard and the unrelenting vigor of his tongue. Thighs vibrating and a tremor in my tummy, I hold myself on Jon’s suctioned lips until the stars behind my eyelids erupt, and my spent clit begs for mercy. But as soon as I lift my hips enough to feel air on my cunt, all I want is to nuzzle it back where it was.

Cautiously, I hover an inch above Jon’s mouth, whimpering with each extra lick he pays to my overstimulated clit. “Fuck, puppy,” I sigh, pushing his hands off my ass so I can crawl down his body. The carpet scratches my knees as I scoot low enough to be it to eye-to-eye with Jon’s erection.

Sitting back on my heels between his legs, I lift his cock skyward. A bead of precum gathers like a smooth crystal mounted to his tip, and I want nothing more than to taste it. But rules are rules. Jon’s cock remains unspent, so rather than devour him whole, I swipe his precum up with my thumb and pop that into my mouth instead.

My rejoicing tastebuds salivate, and I crane down to drool all of that saliva onto Jon’s cock where it belongs. I stroke him slowly in a gentle fist, up and down his veiny shaft and over the flange.

Jon’s moans are music to my ears. The desperate, awestruck glaze in his eyes makes me feel powerful. Makes me feel like he’s mine already.

“Please,” he breathes as I lower my mouth so close to his cock that a fresh bead of precum dissolves on my bottom lip.

One lick won’t hurt, but I have just enough self control to hold off. No amount of control is strong enough to keep me from tasting his climax, though. When I open my mouth and extend my tongue, its not to lap at Jon’s cock but to catch his semen straight from the source. Globs of it strike my lips and tongue and even the tip of my nose. I milk him of every drop, swallow what’s in my mouth, then lick the rest from my fingers.

Breathing hard through his quivering body, Jon sits up on his elbows to watch me suck his jizz off my hand. He reaches out and runs his thumb across my chin. When he sticks that thumb into his own mouth, my heart stops for half a second. Now, nothing can stop me from pouncing. I tackle him back to the floor and press my cummy mouth to his, kissing him like he’s got all the oxygen left in the world inside his lungs, and he’s sharing it only with me.

Normally, this is when I’d expect my pet to say thank you, Mistress, or is Jon’s case, thank you, Miss Targaryen. After all, it’s my generosity alone that decides when my pets climax. But Jon’s insubordination is all my fault. I can’t stop kissing him long enough for him to speak! I can’t remember the last time I kissed a man so much after a session, if ever, but that’s because I’ve never been with a man like Jon before. A man I don’t just want to own, but love too.

Could he ever love me?

When my lips are kissed swollen, I lean upward enough to look into Jon’s eyes when I ask, “Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?”

Dark, sated gaze flitting between my mouth and my eyes, Jon whispers, “Yes.”

A grin reaches my ears before I dive back into Jon’s mouth, kissing him while he hugs me around the waist and rubs my legs with his own.

He purrs against my lips, like I should be calling him kitten instead of puppy. Either way, he’s mine now. Whether official or not, his name has carved itself onto a dotted line across my heart. One thing is official, though. I’m already in deep, and the only direction there is to go is deeper.

Chapter Text

JON

White roses. They were her favorite. At least, that’s what I believed my whole life when Dad would buy a bouquet of white roses every thirteenth of October. Thirteen. . . Some say it’s an unlucky number, and it’s hard for me to disagree, but today I turn thirty-one, and the inverse of something unlucky should be lucky, right?

“Are these for Dany?” The florist’s daughter asks.

“What?”

Margaery Tyrell, a woman I went to school with once upon a time, wraps the bouquet in brown paper and cuts a ribbon to cinch it all together, wearing a crafty smile as she does. “Word around town is that you and Miss Dany are an item. You’re a smart man to woo her over with flowers. White roses are an ominous choice, but if she doesn’t mind working at a funeral parlor, she may not mind white roses either.”

I have half the mind to lie and say Miss Targaryen and I are nothing more than employee and employer, but it’s naïve to think a town as small and monotonous as Winterfell wouldn’t catch on to the dates we’ve been on. The theater on 8th Street, the seafood restaurant on Godswood Way, and last weekend Miss Targaryen convinced me to shutter the mortuary early to go to the monthly flea market together. She bought an end table she said she’d paint to match her apartment’s aesthetic, but she was tongue tied trying to describe exactly what that aesthetic is. If it’s anything like her personality, I’m sure it’s bright and cozy. I helped her load the end table into her car, and after shaking out the strain in her arms, she draped them around my neck and kissed me.

Would Miss Targaryen like flowers?

“They’re for my mother,” I answer Margaery, my sudden anxiety crinkling my forehead enough to make the front of my skull ache.

Halfway through making a bow out of the ribbon, Margaery stills and looks at me solemnly. “Jon, I completely forgot what day it is. I’m sorry.”

Sincerity is an odd emotion to see on the woman who used to call me names in school, but she was also close with my brother before he died. If Robb hadn’t gotten black-out drunk so close to the lake that night, it might be him and Margaery running the mortuary together. Maybe this sincerity is more for Robb, and what could have been, than for me.

“It’s alright.” In my awkwardness, I scan the walls and all the colorful arrangements that would be much more romantic than six white roses. But what do I know about romance?

When Margaery tells me my total, I pay with my card, then I cradle Mom’s bouquet over one arm like it’s a napping infant.

“Happy birthday,” Margaery tells me with a cheerless smile as she hands over my receipt.

Next stop is the Winterfell Municipal Cemetery. I’m here so often, the grounds crew greet me by name as I trek through the morning fog toward the Stark family plots. I used to visit much more frequently, but the past few years, I’ve limited myself to only the important days. While I somehow feel immeasurable comfort at the mortuary, I hate the cemetery. I hate walking over an underground tomb of chemically preserved bodies, and I hate thinking about how much tissue might be left on my mother’s thirty-one-year-old corpse. I hate that I can’t visit my family without also visiting the vacant plot on the opposite side of my father’s that’s reserved for me.

Maybe that’s where the curse comes from. Even for morticians, purchasing a family plot when your youngest is still in the womb cannot breed good fortune.

First thing I do when I’m standing over Mom’s grave is apologize for my time away, in case any ghosts who may have imprinted themselves to this moment in time care that I haven’t visited in months.

Then, I kneel and lay the freshly gathered bouquet at the base of Mom’s headstone, careful not to allow the grass to dampen my pants. The grounds crew is taking branches off the trees in preparation for Winter, but they’re enough of a ways away that their power saw is but a low buzz in the distance.

At a loss for what to say to a woman I never met, and whom Dad seldom spoke about, I talk to him instead. I tell him about the mortuary, the loans, and the state of the house. I tell him about Tywin Lannister biting the dust and how the mortuary was named in the paper about his funeral. When I’ve run out of tedious updates, I struggle to voice the more exciting ones. Even if there are no ghosts listening in, it’s all so difficult to speak out loud, in case I wind up jinxing it.

“Dany is still at the mortuary,” I tell my parents’ twin headstones. “Aerys Targaryen’s daughter, if you remember. I figured she’d leave once she completed her degree – move to the city or something – but she’s stayed so far. It’s been good for the business. She remains very helpful.”

I pause to sigh and scratch at the base of my neck. “The truth is, we’ve been dating. That’s been. . . weird. I know it’s improper, since I am her employer, but you two ran the mortuary together before I was born. Maybe that’s the way it should be. Not that Dany and I are getting married or anything like that. We’ve only been on a few dates. I just mean that. . . I don’t know what I mean. I guess, I just wanted to say that things are okay right now, and it’s mostly because of her.”

Regarding Dad’s plot, I say, “I know the last time you saw her she had to have been about sixteen, but that was years ago. She’s very grown up now. Very sure of herself. Very. . .” Another sigh drops my chin to my chest and I stare at the grass dampening my shoes while considering the probability that I’m just talking to myself. When I pick my head back up, it’s only to say goodbye, and that I need to get back to work.

Arriving to the mortuary in full daylight is an unusual feeling only amplified by sleep deprivation and general melancholy, like I’ve disappointed myself and this place. Like I’ve disappointed Dad and Mom, even my brother, who should have been the one to take over this place. Even Miss Targaryen. . . I’m always here when she arrives for the day, but this morning she had to open up on her own, and it can be eerie in the mortuary all by one’s self.

One of the double front doors is propped ajar, and when I slip through into the foyer on a gust of autumn wind, I’m perplexed to find Miss Targaryen’s bare feet up on the front desk and her whole head shoved up into an open panel in the ceiling. Raised on her painted toes, she dances for balance while her hands brace on the part of the ceiling still intact.

As bizarre as it is, I’m only human, and being eye level with her smooth legs lights my inner fuse right out of the gate. Another reason to get to work early is that I have time to accomplish some of my to-do list before the siren herself arrives to distract me with her beguiling existence.

“Miss Targaryen?”

A muffled squeak chirps from the ceiling before a flinch of surprise draws Miss Targaryen to dip out of the hole. “Jon,” she says through a breathy chuckle as she slips the attic panel back into place. She crouches down and plants a palm on the desk top. “Good morning. I was just, uh, checking the attic.”

I hold back a delighted grin. “I can see that.”

She reaches out, and I take her hand. Squeezing tight, she uses me as leverage now to maneuver her butt onto the desk then to stand upon the carpet. Reflexively, I look down at how cute her feet look against the same fibers my knees sat upon the first time I worshipped her.

“I swear I heard something moving around up there,” she says.

“Probably one of the ghosts.” A joke, though my inflection never changes.

“I think I’ll call the rodent guys anyway, just in case.”

“Alright.” I pry my stare from her toes with the promise of looking into her marble eyes. “I’m sorry I’m getting in so late.”

“Don’t be. You should take more mornings off, not less.”

I knew she would say something like that, but her compassion doesn’t negate how guilty I feel leaving her here all alone. Something could have gone wrong. Someone could have robbed the place. It’s never happened before, but there’s a first time for everything, and if the first time this place ever gets robbed is the one morning Miss Targaryen is here by herself, I’ll never recover. Instead of telling her all of that, I lean in and touch a kiss to her cheek.

It pinkens as her smile widens, and her hand is quick to sneak behind my neck while she returns the kiss to my lips. Inappropriate, especially so close to the open front door, but I don’t protest. Every time she touches me, my body grows more accustomed to the feeling, and I like being accustomed to Miss Targaryen. I like that every time I see her, I’m sure to be touched and kissed and gazed at like she’s glad I’m here. Come to think of it, she’s been gazing at me like that for quite some time. Years even.

Hand slipping to my cheek, she says, “Your eyes are bloodshot.”

“I didn’t sleep well.”

“Poor thing,” she murmurs, thumb dragging back and forth across my whiskers. “There’s fresh coffee in the kitchen.”

What I’d really like is to lay my head on her shoulder and sleep away a few hours just like that, but there’s so much to be done, and I’m already getting a late start.

Following the promise of caffeine, I head down the hall and make a quick left into the kitchen, immediately smelling my dark roast in the air. It shouldn’t surprise me to see a small, vanilla layer cake sitting on a dish beside the coffee maker with a single candle stuck in the center, but it does. I never talk about my birthday, because it’s never fallen on a day anyone would wish to chat about. But Miss Targaryen has a way of fishing secrets out of my life’s undercurrent and polishing them up until they’re not so shameful.

“Happy Birthday,” her rich tone sings from the doorway. She draws a matchbook from the pocket of her cardigan and walks it to the counter. Feet back into her modest heels, they clap softly on the linoleum as she struts past me. She strikes a match with one swipe and lights the candle. “Make a wish,” she tells me, shaking out the flame before dropping the match into the sink.

I’m at a loss for thought, so I wish for the first thing that pops into my head and blow out the candle. Seconds later, my wish comes true when Miss Targaryen circles her arms around me and kisses me again. Away from the front door, I let the kiss last. I never want it to end, even if it means standing in this kitchen forever, letting the cake spoil and the coffee go stale.

“What are you doing for your birthday?” asks Miss Targaryen with her arms still hugging my waist beneath my blazer.

“Nothing. Work.”

“Come over tonight. I’ll cook for you.”

My stomach hums at the mere thought of tasting Miss Targaryen’s home cooking, especially knowing how she likes to add her own special ingredients. But it seems not even her sweetness can break through my mucky mood. “I probably shouldn’t. Today’s. . . not a good day.”

With a small smile, she says, “Then let’s make it better. Okay?”

She makes it sound easy, and I want to believe it can be. In three years, she’s never steered me wrong, but things are changing with us. The foundation is shifting, and it’s uncertain which direction it will settle. Even the best things have a way of ending in tragedy, and that’s a good enough reason to keep Miss Targaryen an arm’s length away.

“I don’t think it’s a day I’m supposed to make better.” As much as it kills me to be obstinate, it hurts more to draw Miss Targaryen’s smile into a frown, no matter how coated in sympathy it is. “Thank you, though.”

Pain builds on pain as my stubborn despondency forces me out of Miss Targaryen’s hold, choosing coffee over what I truly need.

“Jon.” Her hand rests at the small of my back, and hard as I try, I still flinch.

Focusing on getting coffee into a clean mug without the tremor in my hand sloshing it around, I mutter, “I just can’t today.”

“Can’t what?”

Be happy. “I can’t come over tonight. I’m sorry.”

The silence I provoke is more unsettling than any noises I’ve heard from the attic, but it’s the loss of warmth when Miss Targaryen takes her hand away that fills me with regret. She tells me it’s okay, and that she’ll handle the appointments for today, to give me a break. Not having to interact with anyone else today is the best birthday gift she could give me, even better than vanilla cake, but when she leaves the break room, I feel more longing than peace.

Halfway through the day, the longing grows too strong, and I come up from my death bunker to check in on the land of the living. And indeed, simply being on the same floor as Miss Targaryen introduces life to the depressive mood I’ve been nurturing in the lab.

She’s with clients, and like a voyeur, I spy on the consultation from the doorway and see more of Miss Targaryen’s sympathetic smiles directed at people whose grief is valid. I’d told Miss Targaryen it’s improper to smile, but her smiles are special. They’re always proper, and they always make my skin tingle, even when they aren’t for me.

After a short while, I flip the social switch inside myself and walk into the consultation room to introduce myself to the widow and her adult children. “So, you’re the Stark,” the window says while I shake her hand. Yes. . . I’m the Stark. For better or worse.

I’m good with clients, through years of trial and error, but I don’t take pleasure in these meetings. They are necessary, and I take them seriously, but in a world perfectly curated to my personality, we could skip all of the commiserating, consoling, and tip-toed words to soften the fact that this is a business. Miss Targaryen is a natural. Nothing is forced or pandering. Even when it’s time to discuss costs, she makes the transition so seamless that even something as rigid as numbers lose their significance.

When the paperwork is signed and the clients leave, Miss Targaryen and I are alone again, and significance in everything fades to a thin fog. Significance in money and business, in life and death, in me and everyone else – everyone except her. Significance only grows with Miss Targaryen. Her petite body is full to bursting with it.

And I didn’t even eat her cake.

“I’m going to scan these,” Miss Targaryen tells me, holding freshly signed documents to her chest. She turns and makes it half way out of the room before I speak up.

“Miss Targaryen—”

She turns, and I suddenly forget what it is I’m supposed to say. Something bold and honest.

“Thank you,” I cowardly utter, “for your hard work.”

“Of course.” Her eyes say a lot, but I’m not afforded enough time to process it all before she turns again and slips off down the hallway.

Fuck.

My brain is swollen with the fumes I’m running on, leaving little left to keep me upright. I sway in my oxfords and press my fingers to my temples. On days like today, simply breathing oxygen feels oppressive, but I know I’m not doing myself any favors. The only thing that makes me feel less like just another ghost haunting these halls is Miss Targaryen, but when I’m not begging for something, I’m pushing her away.

Drawn to her scent and her things, I amble to her desk where her sweater is draped over her chair, an apple cinnamon candle sits unlit beside the computer monitor, and her purse is stowed away in the foot space. A pair of flat canvas shoes poke out of her bag, the ones she changes into before driving home at the end of the day. Like a death burrow, I climb down to my knees and wedge myself in the foot space, turning on my ass and pulling my knees toward my chest.

The thick air is easier to manage down here, and the darkness does my aching eyes some good. The carpet keeps me warm while the smooth wood surrounding me on three sides prevents me from overheating. It feels so good, I lose myself in the calm, and by the time Miss Targaryen returns to her desk, I’m too dazed to care. The only spike in my heartrate comes when she drops into her chair and guides her feet toward me. When they collide with my hip, she gasps and folds to peer at me under the desk.

“Jon,” she says with an air of urgency. “Are you alright?”

I stare at her pale knees, my hand reflexively clasping her ankle like it could be the difference between her staying and going. “I’m sorry. I felt lightheaded.”

“Do you want to go home? I can drive you.”

Home is where my bed is, and that’s nearly enough to get me to agree, but here is where Miss Targaryen is. “I’m sorry. I’ll move in a second.”

Her hand slips from her lap to tangle in my hair, fingers gently scratching my scalp. “Why don’t you stay there for a little while? You can keep me company while I make some phone calls.”

Mercifully, she slips out of her tall shoes so that when she rests her feet on my lap like an ottoman, it’s only her smooth heels nuzzling my pelvis. Resting against the wall of solid wood drawers, I hug my hands over Miss Targaryen’s feet and listen to her soft yet confident cadence as she makes business calls to our various vendor reps. I hate talking on the phone. Making and answering calls was one of the first tasks I assigned to Miss Targaryen when she began working for me three years ago, and life’s been better since.

After a while, I nearly drift off to sleep, but the sound of the front door popping open flinches me to full consciousness. The breeze is biting. It seeps through the thin panel shielding me from view of whoever is stomping into the foyer.

Miss Targaryen is not fazed. She stays seated and calm, and she greets whoever approaches with a cordial good morning.

“Just need a signature at the bottom,” speaks a masculine vibrato as something thunks on the desk top above my head. A parcel, I assume, from a vendor or a delivery company.

I hear the clicking of a pen followed by the man’s voice objecting, “I mean that I need your boss’s signature.”

Wondering how I’m going to get out from under this desk without humiliation myself in front of a stranger, my heartrate skyrockets. The pulsing feeling in my skull returns, and shame seeps to the forefront of my nerves.

“I understand,” Miss Targaryen says before I hear small scratching noises like the tip of a pen swirling across a clip board. “There.”

The deliverer answers with a low, disapproving hum, but leaves promptly thereafter, swinging the front door shut behind him.

“Asshole,” Miss Targaryen mutters, and I find myself smiling. Welcoming the peace of being alone with her again and delighting in her audacity to not only sign my name on deliveries but to do so flagrantly in front of a gruff delivery person. While I draw one of Miss Targaryen’s feet toward my mouth, I wonder if she’s practiced my signature often, and how close it is to the real thing.

I kiss the soft underside of her toes before slipping my tongue between them, and I delight further in Miss Targaryen’s quiet moan and her sweet voice saying, “That’s a good boy.”

As her employer, I should be proud she is continuing her work; I hear the periodic clack of her keyboard, click of her mouse, and pop of a highlighter cap. But it turns me on more than it prides me, her ability to ignore the pleasure I’m desperately trying to provide in favor of mundane office tasks.

While she rests one foot on the side of my face, I massage the other over my lap. When my cock is throbbing in my pants, I sit the sole of her foot on top of my bulging fly.

The phone rings, and Miss Targaryen’s sweet, cordial voice greets the caller through the landline. Seconds into the conversation, she finally acknowledges my wiles by curling and uncurling her toes against my erection, creating a soft kneading sensation that threatens a moan to crawl up my throat.

“I’m sorry, Jon is not in at the moment,” Miss Targaryen tells the caller. “If you would like to leave your number with me, I can see to it he gives you a call back tomorrow.”

Tomorrow? Does Miss Targaryen think I’ll stay under her desk all day? Would she demand it? I glue my eyes to the smooth expanse of her thighs and admonish the pesky shadows that keep me from seeing what sort of panties she’s wearing under her grey skirt.

Overcome, I sneak a hand between her legs, but before I reach her treasure, the foot in my lap presses down like a dumbbell mashing my rigid dick. Gasping, I pull my hand back and grab Miss Targaryen’s ankle before I cry, or cum in my pants, or both. I bite my lip to muffle my groan as I rock my hips enough to revel in the bit of pleasure all this pain gives me.

“Alright, I will let him know as soon as I see him,” Miss Targaryen says into the phone, a chipper phone-voice that could win an Academy Award. Unless, she’s not turned on at all. Unless, I am nothing more than a footstool – a useful object for her to disregard at will. She must realize how insatiable that makes me.

As soon as she hangs up the phone, my ravenous lust prays she will spread her knees for me. One look at her pussy while her foot mashes my dick will do me in, and I’m desperate enough not to worry about the mess.

“Finally getting restless down there, aren’t you, puppy?” she says, voice like serrated sex.

“Yes, Miss Targaryen.” That’s right. . . Not an object. A puppy. I sure am panting like a puppy, and I really wish I was as naked as one. The mortuary is naturally drafty, even when there isn’t a window or door left open, but down here, I’m sweating.

Reclining in her chair, she spies me under the desk. “I think you might be in heat. But I’m not sure you’re ready to be bred yet.”

Yet. An innocuous word that stirs so much turmoil inside me. The crushing pressure on my cock tightens my skin and fills my eyes with stars. I push down on Miss Targaryen’s foot to feel it even more.

She moans and rolls her sole. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve wanted to fuck you?”

“Oh, fuck,” my pathetic voice whimpers as the overwhelming tightness in my balls ripples an intense orgasm through my cock. Strong, euphoric pulses of energy overcome my body and fill my trousers with enough semen I feel it seep down my ass. My heart beats like a bull bucking against my chest, and I feel so wet and sticky and disgusting. My dick hurts, I can hardly breathe, and all I want is to know what it’s like to be normal for once in my life.

“Jon?”

The weight leaves my throbbing crotch, and relief spills over into shame. I cover my eyes with my hands and feel wetness.

“Jon.” Miss Targaryen’s voice is close to my ear now, her arms snaking around me. They lull me sideways until my head is on her shoulder, and I cry in the curve of her vanilla scented neck. Hands sweeping across my spine, she sings into my ear a sweet sound laced with worry. “Are you okay? Did I do something? I’m sorry.”

Her apology only worsens my state, and I can feel my infrastructure crumbling to dust in her arms. She shushes me like a fussy baby, rocking me gently and sliding one hand up to cradle the back of my head. She’s as soft as a plush quilt and as sturdy as a stone pillar, holding my weight like I’m light as feathers.

When my intrusive emotions wane, I catch my breath and tell her I’m sorry, because if anyone should apologize it’s me. But her immediate reaction is to say, “You have nothing to apologize for.”

“Today’s a bad day,” I whine, dampening her sleek, pretty blouse with my sweaty palms, “and I came in my pants.”

“That’s okay, baby.” She kisses my heated face. “I’m going to clean you up good as new.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“You’re mine,” she murmurs. “I have to take care of you.”

Despite the persistent shedding from my tear ducts, I unmask myself from Miss Targaryen’s neck and blink through the water to see the earnestness in her eyes. “Okay. Thank you.”

Her thumb strokes a path down my cheek. Her lips press a kiss to my forehead, and she helps me from the floor like I’m frail.

On bare feet, she struts to the door and turns the deadbolt despite our hours of operation, but the businessman in me has already long left for the day, and all that’s left are my fundamental pieces, and as broken as they may be, they all belong to Miss Targaryen.

Next, she takes my hand and leads me into the restroom. It smells like cherry blossoms because of the air freshener Miss Targaryen periodically refills, and there are real hand towels hidden under the sink. “Take your clothes off for me, babe,” she says while crouched down, grabbing one of the towels.

I want to obey, but catching my tear streaked reflection in the mirror reminds me what a pathetic freak I am, and my fingers atrophy halfway through unfastening my belt buckle.

“Hey.” Miss Targaryen leaves the towel on the sink to fold her hands around my arms. “It’s going to be okay. I’m just going to clean you up. No reason to be nervous.”

“I’m not nervous. I’m just. . .” I gulp, averting my eyes to the floral wallpaper Miss Targaryen calls grandma chic. Mom had picked it out way back when, and I suppose if she were alive still, she could very well be a grandma by now. But only if Robb were also alive. Robb would’ve had kids. He would be married by now with a whole slew of kids. “I just don’t want to disappoint you.”

“You haven’t disappointed me, Jon. I admire you.”

I reflexively bat away the sentiment with a head shake. “I should be stronger.”

“You’re strong enough,” she insists, arms gliding across my shoulders until her palms cup my jaw. “You’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever known. It’s okay to be vulnerable, too. It’s even okay to be weak sometimes. It doesn’t make you any less perfect. Whether you’re weak or strong, naked or clothed, on your knees or standing straight, you’re perfect, Jon. You should be proud of yourself. Not ashamed.”

She claims I’m strong, but my body feels as fragile as paper mache. I grip her waist and lean my forehead against hers just to steady myself. But what if I’m weak all the time? What if I need you for too much? What if I want to spend the rest of my life sitting under your desk, keeping your feet warm?

The pressure behind my eyes builds anew, and before my eyes leak again, I drop my forehead to Miss Targaryen’s shoulder and squeeze her tightly in my arms. She feels so small and delicate, but when I feel ready to collapse, she never wavers.

Turning my mouth against her neck, I ask, “Will you take me home?”

All softness and no hesitation, she answers, “Of course I will.”

Growing up with a mom who was dead and a dad who worked all the time, I never knew what it was like to be taken home early from school if I fell ill. On days where I did spring a cold in the middle of class or eat something at lunch that had me hurling into a boys’ room toilet, I’d either suck it up or hide out under the football bleachers until the end of final period. I always fantasized that if only I had a living mom, she would pick me up, drive me home, and sit with me in bed raking her fingernails up and down my back until a healing sleep takes over.

I’ll never know the feeling of such a simple pleasure as that, but right now, slumped in the passenger seat of Miss Targaryen’s little hatchback, it’s the closest I’ve ever gotten. But instead of a runny nose or stomach bug, I’m just a cry baby with gooey underwear. I think I can smell it. Like petrichor in the air. But I try not to think about that. I try and bask in this feeling while it’s still present. The afternoon sun warming me through the windshield, the hand clasped in mine over empty cupholders, and the autumn glow making Miss Targaryen’s fair complexion sparkle.

She’s so beautiful. Every bit of her. Her voice is beautiful, too, asking me directions here and there, because she’s never been to my house before.

I tell her to make a left at the next intersection, and the light takes a few minutes with all the foot traffic from the high school letting out. Watching the kids cross in front of the bumper, I wonder if I looked just as young when I was their age.

“Were you popular in high school?”

With her left turn blinker softly beeping in the background, Miss Targaryen answers, “Popular? Not really. I had my group, and I got along with people pretty well, but I was sort of a weird-girl in school.”

“I always liked the weird-girls.”

Her smile stretches, teeth flashing as her eyes flit to me. They flit back just in time for the green arrow to flash, and she slips her hand out of mine to make the left turn with both hands on the steering wheel. A straight shot to my street now, Miss Targaryen takes that hand back off the wheel and lays it on my head this time. Her fingers combing my scalp puts more life into my childhood fantasies. I moan and lull my head toward her shoulder, eyes slipping shut as the motion of the car rocks me like a basinet.

“I was a loser in high school,” I mumble, mind fogging with drowsiness. “Wasn’t cool, or athletic, or smart, or funny.”

“All the funny guys I ever met were douche bags anyway.”

“My brother was funny. He was popular. Everyone liked him. He was friends with everyone.”

“I would have been your friend.” Her voice sounds like a song, echoing in the center of my chest. I hum along with it, nearly moaning.

The motion under me slows, and I peel my eyelids open to see we’re turning onto my sleepy street. The trees are beginning to bare. Orange and brown leaves scatter the pavement. “Down a little ways, on the right.”

Halfway down Crescent Ave is the grey, two-story craftsman Mom and Dad bought years before either my brother or I were born. I never left. Not even for college. When Robb died, I moved into his room, because it was bigger. When Dad died, I moved into his room, because ghosts can’t tell me where I can and cannot sleep.

It’s a strange way to level up in life. Just like moving from room to room, I moved from second-child, to heir, to master of my family’s home and business simply by outlasting my predecessors. And it isn’t as though I did anything to outlast. Sometimes, I wonder if I’ve ever done anything at all.

Bringing Miss Targaryen into the only place I’ve ever called home feels more like introducing her to my family than it would if I took her to their gravesite. Their photos are still on the walls, Mom’s quilt is still on the sofa, Dad’s records still fill the bookshelves, and Robb’s magnet collection is still stuck to the refrigerator.

It’s cold in the house. Colder than outside even. I cross the living room and turn the dial on the thermostat until I hear the furnace click on.

Miss Targaryen comes to my side while paying the walls around us a studious look. She smiles and slips her arms around me. As good as it feels, I’m also well aware of how filthy I am.

“I should shower,” I say, but my arms are less anxious than my mind. They hug her back rather than pull away.

Miss Targaryen tips her chin up, meeting my gaze. “Where’s your bathroom?”

“Upstairs.”

With a small smile, she separates from me only to slip her hand into mine and guide me across the floor and to the stairwell. We pass the rooms that used to be mine at one point or another until we cross into the primary room in the back with the pitched ceiling, tall windows, and a bathroom beside the closet.

My bed is unmade, the top drawer of my dresser left open, and there’s clutter covering both night tables and pushed into all four corners of the room. If Miss Targaryen is turned off by the mess, she doesn’t mention it. She puts her purse on the bed and takes me straight into the en-suite like she’s the one who’s lived here all her life.

The curtain is open around the clawfoot tub, and Miss Targaryen releases my hand to crank the hot water on. I curl my arms around myself and use the cold as an excuse to be timid while Miss Targaryen begins to undress like she’s fixing to shower with me.

She reveals her body to me one body part at a time until all she’s left in are her bra and panties. I must look like a pervert the way I’m staring, because she smirks at me and says, “You can’t shower with your clothes on, puppy.”

I nod and push past my lingering self-consciousness, my heart beating a mile a minute while I shed clothes onto the tile floor. When all that’s left to shed are my damp boxer briefs, I hold my breath and push them down to my ankles.

By now, Miss Targaryen is good and naked too. Amid the steam filling the air, she steps so close to me that the peaks of her breasts graze my chest while her hands caress my sides and hips. “You don’t mind being naked with me, do you?”

A silly question, asked through a sultry half smile and dreamy eyes I’d get lost in if I weren’t already well hypnotized by the feel of her plump breasts against me and her slim waist in my hands, and the scent of her arousal in the humid air.

Her hand trails around my hip and over my flaccid cock and cummy balls. “Mmm, you’re as wet as my pussy.”

With her other hand, she finds one of mine and draws it to her cleft. Indeed, her folds are slick with fluid. How she can stand it, I don’t know, but touching it swells my sticky cock in her palm. My fingertips nuzzle past her labia and wade in her warm pond sheening the softest flesh I’ve ever touched. She leans in, rubbing her nipples across my chest and moaning beneath my ear while she pumps my cock against her tummy.

“I have a present for you,” she whispers. “I’ll give it to you once you’re nice and clean.”

“You didn’t have to get me anything.” But as Miss Targaryen nurses my cock closer to full strength, I grow desperate for any gifts she’s willing to give.

I whimper when she takes her hand away, but the denial only makes me want her more. The yearning ache in my balls makes me want to fall to my knees and worship her until she’s so spent she can’t keep herself conscious long enough to allow me a climax.

Staring into my eyes, she runs the tip of her tongue along her lips and slips her hand into mine, guiding me toward the tub. “It will be just as much a present for me, if you accept it.”

A lump forms in my throat that I forget to swallow until my mouth is a pool of spit. It drools down my chin with the first open-mouthed kiss Miss Targaryen and I share under my shower head, and she licks it up with her tongue before tipping her head back and letting the rain wet her hair. She turns us, so the water falls on the back of my head, washing down my back and sluicing over my shoulders. My eyelids flutter and my erection wanes as Miss Targaryen sooths my body with her soft hands. Her lips peck my jaw and my throat when I crane my head back.

“Look at you,” she murmurs. “The most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen.”

My own hands find courage, traversing her body from the swell of her butt to the tops of her shoulders. I smooth my palms up and down the curve of her back while we rock together gently. I tilt my chin down and press my mouth to her wet forehead. “Thank you. I’m sorry I didn’t eat your cake.”

“Awe, baby.” She hugs me around my shoulders, fingers in my wet hair as I slump my face down into the crook of her neck to kiss the shower water off her skin. “You have nothing to apologize for. I just want you to be happy on your birthday.”

A tall order, happiness. But as I’m rocked in Miss Targaryen’s arms, I know I’ve never felt more content, more hopeful, or more grateful. My chest aches from how swollen my heart feels, and the weight of it softens my legs, and gravity brings me to my knees on white porcelain. I hug my arms around her hips, ear to her tummy, and I shut my eyes to the feel of her petting back by hair.

“Good boy,” she says, and I nuzzle against her with a small bit of the pride she told me I ought to have. And it actually feels really fucking good.

After minutes that feel like the most glorious hours of my life, Miss Targaryen really does wash me up. She takes my body wash from the shelf and lathers me with it. My whole body. She even slips her soapy palm between my ass cheeks, causing my insides to flutter. She washes herself, too, and I help as much as my nerves will allow, and as I massage sandalwood scented bubbles around Miss Targaryen’s perfect breasts, I wonder if this all means she’s mine too. I want to ask, but I also don’t want to jinx anything. Last thing I need is another curse.

It isn’t until we both permeate sandalwood that Miss Targaryen cuts the water, we towel off, and we leave this steamy wonderland in favor of my bedroom. Even as the furnace does it’s job, my skin flushes with goosebumps and my dick retreats into my wrinkled foreskin. Not even Miss Targaryen’s nudity as she ties her hair up into a wet bun coaxes an erection, but my eyes and mind are all sorts of aroused.

She eyes me over her shoulder, wearing a smile laced with mischief as her gaze lingers on my shriveled cock. I want to put my hand over it, either to shield myself or rub myself to a size less humiliating, but I know how Miss Targaryen feels about people touching her things. So I keep my hands at my sides and submit to my Mistresses stare.

Her tongue wets her lips to glistening, just as pink as her nipples but nothing compared to what’s between her legs. “Come on, baby.” She reaches out and takes my hand, leading me to bed.

Another first. Cuddling in my bed with a girl. With a woman. With someone I care more about than any other earthly being. I may even care more about her than the spirits following me around. Are they here now?

“Get some sleep,” she says, holding me flush. “I’ll give you your present when you wake up.”

I breathe against her, head on her chest and my hand under her breast. “Miss Targaryen? Will you rub my back?”

“Of course.” There’s a smile in her tone, and her fingertips begin a tantalizing dance along my spine. It feels so good, I almost don’t want to fall asleep, but it finds me anyway, just as Miss Targaryen found me.

When I wake up, the room is dim and the window glows an evening blue. I’m on my side, drool down my cheek and a warm body pressed to my back, an arm around my waist and a hand rubbing the center of my chest. I turn onto my back, and that hand slips down to my stomach.

Blue eyes blink back at me, the hint of a smile on pink lips. The room is good and warm now. I feel like a loaf of bread slowly baking. I push the covers down past my hips and turn into Miss Targaryen’s arms to recreate the last position we were in before I napped. I tuck my knee under her thigh and kiss the swell of her breast.

“Sleepy head,” she calls me, kissing my hair. “It’s almost dinner time. You getting hungry?”

The only sound my throat can make is a low, uncertain hum. While my stomach does feel hollow with hunger, food isn’t what appeals to me right now. I slip a little lower down Miss Targaryen’s side and latch my mouth onto her soft nipple, sucking until it’s a pebble between my lips.

“Mmm,” she moans, back arching and hips shifting against me. “I still need to give you your present.”

I can’t fathom a gift better than the one in my hands now. I climb up to my elbows and knees and devour her other nipple next. My cock was half hard when I awoke, but now I’m firm as stone and opening Miss Targaryen’s legs with my knees. I moan around her nipple while the tip of my cock grazes her pubic bone.

“Are you trying to fuck me, puppy?” she asks in that sweetly devilish way that both scares and enthralls me.

Popping her nip from my mouth, I look at her from the tops of my eyes. “You did say I was in heat.”

A grin stretches across her face and she takes mine into her hands. Drawing me up, I kiss her smile while she slips an arm between us and takes hold of my cock. Stroking it in a featherlight fist, she whispers, “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

“Thank you.” I kiss her some more, humping into her fist and moaning against her mouth. If she lets me cum all over her gorgeous body, this will be the best birthday I’ve ever had. But even if she denies me just before orgasm, it will still be the best birthday I’ve ever had.

Our lips smack apart, and Miss Targaryen asks, “You wanna keep fucking my hand like a slut, or do you want your present?”

Fuck. If she’s trying to get me to simmer down, that’s not the way to do it. The word slut alone makes my cock pulse, and I can feel the precum oozing from my slit. It makes humping Miss Targaryen’s fist a lot slicker, and harder to stop.

“Please,” I whimper, resting my forehead to hers.

“Fuck, baby,” she breathes. “You’re so pretty when you’re desperate.”

Her hand leaves me, and I hump air for all of a few seconds until she grabs my hips and moves me off her. I roll onto my ass and watch Miss Targaryen crawl from the covers and reach for her purse. From it, she removes a flat box about the size of a paperback book. Black velvet with a silver clasp. It has a look to it like whatever’s inside is something special. Not a gag gift or cheap tchotchke, but something purposeful.

“I picked this out special for you. Ever since you first got on your knees for me, I’ve dreamt of giving this to you.” All the wickedness has left her tone, replaced by a soberness that thickens the air between us. “Do you still want to be mine?” she asks without an ounce of playfulness. She’s serious. Dead serious, and my heart thumps ever quicker.

“What is it?” I reach for it but stop short of feeling the velvet, like whatever it is may be snatched away if I’m too eager.

A blush across her fresh face, Miss Targaryen passes the box into my hands and says, “Open it and see.”

But it’s difficult to focus on whatever treasure this is when she’s naked as sin before me, like it’s suddenly the most natural thing in the world. I want it to be natural. I want her to be naked with me constantly.

“Go on,” she giggles, her breasts jiggling with the shudder of her breath.

Blushing and sort of nervous, I peel open the top and look inside. Lying upon a bed of silk, is a silver neck chain like the ones athletes and rappers wear, except this one has a cylindrical clasp on one end and a flat rectangular pendant on the other end. I pick up the pendant and read the engraving. Property of Miss Daenerys Targaryen.

In awe, I graze my thumb over the letters just to feel their edges in the cool metal. I flip the tag over, and in all capital letters are the words, DO NOT TOUCH.

I exhale an incredulous chuckle, struck speechless and sort of dazed. I keep blinking, thinking this is all just a beautiful dream, but it’s real. I blink up at Miss Targaryen, and she’s still here, naked, gorgeous, and smiling wide enough to dimple her cheeks.

“What do you think?” she asks.

“It’s. . .” A collar. It’s not leather or spiked, and it will not constrict my neck or show through my shirts, but it’s a collar nonetheless. It’s something I’ve fantasized about for so long I become afraid of it, like that sudden hesitation right before putting a new driver’s license to use. What if I abuse it? What if I’m reckless, impatient, and overly aggressive? What if I’m a bad puppy? I’ve never been a puppy before I became Miss Targaryen’s. If I fail her as her pet, will she give up on me entirely?

A gentle hand pushes back my hair. “It’s so you always know who you belong to.”

“What if. . .” I lift my eyes to study hers, filled with the same earnestness I always find in her blue irises. “What if I’m not good enough?”

“You are good enough. You’re incredible, Jon. That’s why I want to give this to you. So you always know you’re loved and cherished by me, and that no matter what, I’m always going to be there for you. I’ll always protect you, I’ll always take care of you, and I’ll always be loyal to you as your owner, because you’re the one I choose. It means you’ll never be alone, because I’ll always be with you. Not as a ghost or a curse, but as—”

“The Sun,” I mumble to myself, just audible enough to interrupt her. I look up from the collar, and see she’s smiling.

“Yes. Just like the Sun will always rise, I will always be here for you.”

And just like the Sun looking me straight in the face, this is all so overwhelming. The excitement, the fear, the gratitude, and the confusion. “Why me?” I croak as excitement spills over into tears.

Warm palms skating up and down my thighs, Miss Targaryen answers, “Because you’re who I choose to be mine. I chose you a long time ago, but I guess I was scared you wouldn’t accept me.”

“I do accept you. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. The day you showed up to the mortuary and handed me your resume was the day everything started to change. I owe you everything. My whole life, whatever it’s worth. Please?”

“Oh, puppy.” She hooks her arms around my neck and draws me into her. I let the collar and it’s box sit idle on my lap while I hug her back, cheek to cheek. Beside my ear, she tells me, “Your life is worth everything to me. Nothing is as important.”

“I love you.” The words come out with the thumping of my heart. I’ve never seen her apartment, I’ve never officially met her family, and chances are good she’ll never let me fuck her, but I still love her. I’ll do anything for her. Sacrifice anything for her. And, isn’t that what love is? Service and sacrifice.

She peels her cheek from my damp one and blinks her beautiful eyes into mine. “I love you, too.” She leans in and presses her lips to the center of my forehead. “Are you ready to make it official?”

“Yes, please.”

“On your knees,” she says, taking the collar and it’s box from my lap.

I obey, climbing to my knees and sinking them into the mattress. On her own knees before me, Miss Targaryen lifts the collar from the box and brings it around my neck. The chill of the metal reminds me how warm I am, but it’s the moment itself that causes me to shiver. It takes everything in me to stay upright, to not crumple across Miss Targaryen’s lap and thank her until there isn’t a single breath left in my body.

The collar drapes close to my throat, not tight enough to constrict but enough that I won’t be able to slip it over my head. Miss Targaryen fastens it behind my neck then delves back into the box, unfurls the satin inlay and reveals a second chain, longer and skinnier, and at the end is a small, silver pin. She uses the pin in the clasp of my collar, and I hear a very faint click over the sound of our breaths.

“Only I will be capable of unlocking you.” She sweeps the necklace over her head and settles the pin pendant between her breasts. She plays with it between finger and thumb, caressing it like it’s precious, but her eyes are squarely on me. “It will feel strange at first, but you should get used to it after a few days. If you continue to be discomforted after that, let me know.”

Leaning in, I scoop my hand behind her neck and draw our foreheads together. “The only discomfort I feel is in how intensely I want you.”

“Mm,” she moans, jumping her hands to my chest. Her nimble fingers find my nipples and rub them like she did the key to my new collar. “Is that so, puppy? Are you aching for me?”

“Mhm.” I inch my chin forward, chasing her lips, but they stray from mine with a smirk.

“Is your pretty cock nice and hard for me?” Her fingers trickle down my body like rain, leaving more shivers in their wake until they reach my erection. Stroking me with only her fingertips, she murmurs, “Does my puppy want to cum?”

“Mhm.” I press forward again, nipping her bottom lip.

A finger swipes over my tip, forcing a low groan from my throat. “I’ve been aching for you, too.” Her hands glide around my hips, pulling me close enough to trap my dick between our bodies. Her lips peck my mouth while her fingers sneak between my cheeks. “I want inside you so bad,” she whispers as a fingertip brushes my anus. “Have you been claimed before?”

More shivers. Up my spine and back down. Shivers behind my neck, in my chest, and in my balls. Shivers that curl my toes and make it hard to form words. I lieu of them, I nod.

“Did you enjoy it?”

“Yes,” I breathe, nearly daring to lie.

“But, they never collared you?”

I bide time with a hum under my breath, like I need to think on it. But the memories still sit at the forefront of my mind. The most electric experiences I ever had, until Miss Targaryen came along. “There were collars,” I admit, “but it was just pretend.”

With a nod, she pecks my mouth again. “Mine isn’t pretend. Mine is for real.”

My cock pulses to the same rhythm as my hips rock between her body and her hand. I crash my mouth into hers, and I lick her tongue of all it’s sweetness, moaning as her finger slowly pets my sensitive rim.

“I think my new pet deserves a super special treat for being such a good boy,” Miss Targaryen speaks into my panting mouth. “What do you think?”

“Uh huh.”

“Is that a please?”

My head lulls forward and my mouth finds her ear. “Yes, please,” I plead before swiping my tongue across her ear.

Miss Targaryen’s soulful moan echoes in my ear while I devour hers, making it wet all over until she’s the one shivering against me. “Down, puppy,” she commands, pushing my hips back. “Show me your belly.”

Eager to submit, I fall away from my owner to sprawl on my back before her hungry gaze. I’m used to my nudity being fodder for a dominant woman’s eyes, but rarely am I fed in a similar manner. My cock pulses from the mere sight of her body unencumbered by a single stitch of clothing. Milky thighs, round hips, small tummy and perky, pink-tipped breasts that have me salivating.

She taps my knees and they fall apart like swinging doors, and I swallow my spit just in time for her to lean over my mouth and instruct me to open wide. Through half-lidded eyes, I watch my treat drool from Miss Targaryen’s pursed lips, and I moan as it reaches my tongue. She leans closer, tummy grazing my cock while her nipples kiss my chest. She kisses my lips just long enough for me to swallow her spit down with my own, then she pecks the tip of my chin, then the middle of my chest. She trails kisses down the center of my body until I’m convinced she’s going to take my erection into her mouth, but she bypasses my cock to kiss my hip.

Hands under my thighs, Miss Targaryen spreads me wide and pushes my knees toward my chest. No matter what I’ve done before, I’ve never felt more submissive than I do now. Splayed for the viewing pleasure of the girl of my dreams. The risk is incredibly high, but the chance of reward is too great to pass up. So, I submit. Fully. Bathed in blue dusk and dusty heat, I hold the backs of my knees and allow Miss Targaryen to study my body like a blank canvas. Like she isn’t sure where to begin but knows I’ll be a masterpiece when she’s through.

She scrapes her teeth across her bottom lip while gently massaging my hamstrings. “Fuck,” she sighs. “So fucking pretty.” I watch her duck down low as another thick line of spit leaves her lips. I moan through my teeth when I feel it drip onto my anus and glide down my crack. A finger touches me there, spreading the wetness around my pucker. “Mm, good boy,” she murmurs before ducking even lower.

My muscles melt and my eyelids flutter as I feel Miss Targaryen’s soft, wet tongue licking under my scrotum. She draws a swirling line to my asshole and licks me there next. With all the various corners of depravity I have traversed, Miss Targaryen manages to find the one realm no woman has ever taken me to. Never in my wildest dreams did I think a woman would ever put her mouth there, and now I know how they felt whenever I put my face between their cheeks.

It's. . . relaxing. Not electrifying, but stimulating enough to keep my cock rigid and my mind mushy. Her tongue tracing my hole and swiping across it is better than any massage I’ve paid for. I’m lucky and unworthy, swimming in bliss that is too solid for any shame to seep through. Her hands keep me spread to the max, lips and tongue caressing my ring to loosen.

Lost in space, I don’t know how much time passes, only that Miss Targaryen is unrelenting in her gift. When her mouth finally parts from my ass, it’s only a moment before I feel a stiff finger probing there. Soft as puddy, all my resistance has been licked out of me, and my rim expands effortlessly for her slender finger.

I bear down on her finger, eyes rolling up to my skull as she buries it to the knuckle.

“So tight, puppy,” she says, prying her finger out as slowly as she entered. More spit dribbles over my hole, then I’m filled again. Slow pumps stretch me wider, and I’m mewling toward the ceiling. “You love this, don’t you? You love having your tight little asshole fucked by a girl. Holy shit, you’re so wet.”

I follow Miss Targaryen’s gaze to the tool weeping precum onto my abs. I groan as she pulls her finger from my depth once more, leaving me empty. Between my widespread knees, I watch her dole a cache of saliva onto her fingers which she immediately delivers to my hole.

She breaches me again, and it can’t be only one finger this time. There’s too much stretch and too much pain for it to only be one finger. I groan through a clenched jaw, shutting my eyes and hugging my knee. My belly flutters as she burrows through my channel, murmuring sweet affirmations as she does.

“Your muscles are so strong, baby. So tight around my fingers. So warm in there.”

For minutes, I feel like I’m floating, right up until I feel like every nerve in my body is zinging with electricity. Body quaking, toes curling, inner muscles clenching around the fingers tickling my prostate.

“Oh my, God. Oh my, God,” I moan through my delirium. It’s like an orgasm without the finish. It just keeps rolling and rolling like waves batting a shoreline, pulsing fluid through my cock but never letting it soften.

“That’s it, puppy. Come for me.” A hand wraps gingerly around my base, enough pressure to make my back arch, and what few featherlight strokes Miss Targaryen grants me is enough to end this blissful torture and deliver me to euphoria. The moment her mouth lowers onto my shaft, I finally climax so hard stars burst behind my eyelids and I’m mewling jumbled syllables toward the ceiling.

Between my prostate and the mouth around my cock, I’m rendered a whimpering, quivering mess upon a pillowy duvet. It isn’t until Miss Targaryen has swallowed every last drop of semen from my body that her mouth releases me. I open my eyes just in time to watch her tongue swipe her lips clean of my expulsions.

Our gazes meet, and I shock myself by not shying away. “Good boy,” she tells me.

My jaw goes slack as Miss Targaryen’s fingers pull out of me, and I make sure to clench up nice and firm as soon as I’m empty. I close my knees and stretch my legs across the mattress, a delightful sting in my ass as I wiggle my hips to get comfortable. Miss Targaryen falls on top of me. She kisses my mouth while her sticky hand makes caressing sweeps over my chest and stomach.

Between our lazy kisses, she asks me if I’m okay, and I answer with a nod and more kisses. I finally hear the radiator cycle off, the house finally content with how warm it is. I’m content too, hugging Miss Targaryen against me and dancing my tongue in her mouth despite where it’s been.

“Love you, baby,” she murmurs, making my heart all swollen and achy.

“I love you, too.”

One more smooch and she peels herself from my side to sit up and unravel her hair. While she’s finger-combing her damp tresses, I roll the opposite way and pluck a few tissues from the Kleenex box on my night table. After mopping the fluid off my body as best I can, I leave the dirty tissues on the floor like a slob, switch on the bedside lamp, and dive into the night table’s top drawer for my vape.

Miss Targaryen giggles when I start sucking on it, like I’ve finally surprised her. “That better be weed, puppy.” She lies back, fanning her hair over my pillow, and I roll back beside her. When I hand her my pen, she smirk and says, “You should know, I’m insatiable when I’m high.”

Music to my ears. “Well, I can’t get hard when I’m high, so all I can do is worship you.”

A bright, giddy grin stretches across my Mistress’s face as she takes the pen from my hand and indulges. I peck her cheek, her jaw, and down to her shoulder.

“I’m going to make you eat something eventually,” she says, handing the pen back.

“Mm.” I take a long drag and exhale through my nose. “I’m counting on it.”

After reaching the pen onto my night table, I roll on top of Miss Targaryen and latch my mouth to her throat. I kiss down to the pin key rested upon her clavicle and kiss it, too. I lean back toward her mouth, murmuring, “Thank you,” against her lips.

“Thank you,” she says, fingers in my hair.

“For what?”

“For being the goodest boy in the whole wide world.”

I tuck my face into the curve of her neck while my face blushes, and I huff a bashful chuckle against her sweet skin. The way her fingernails gentle skate down my back makes all my broken pieces not feel so broken anymore. Not normal, though. I’ll never be normal, but if Miss Targaryen is a weird-girl then I’m perfectly content being a weird-boy.

“Miss Targaryen?” I murmur against her neck. “Do you like flowers? Like, as a gift?”

A soft hum lets me know she’s thinking it over. “Honestly, cut flowers remind me too much of funerals now. But, I love plants.”

While I ponder on what sort of plant might convey a deep enough adoration for my Owner, I cuddle with her until we’re tangled. Whenever I kiss her, she kisses me back, and our hands never stray from one other. It all emboldens me to ask, “May I have another treat, Miss Targaryen?”

“What would you like, puppy?”

“Mm, can you sit on my face?”

A soft, beautiful laugh vibrates her chest before she treats me to another sweetly devilish smirk and three lovely words. “Absolutely, I will.”