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“There are times when I look at you and I can’t believe you’re real.”
How long has your manservant been in love with you?
As she stands in the ornate chambers provided for her stay, Daenerys is staggered to realize that Xaro Xhoan Daxos had been right. Even if Jorah admitted nothing so frankly, he had revealed everything in his words and his normally stoic blue eyes, soft and pleading in a way Daenerys had never seen. If he was a dog he would have been rolling over, showing his belly.
Something in it turns her stomach, not from disgust, but just the disbelief that she’d been wrong about yet another thing in her life. How dare Ser Jorah just be a man, like any other man.
And what was she supposed to say? Khaleesi and queen she may be, but she's never been pursued, or wooed, only bought and sold like one of the Dothraki's mounts. She had no mother, no courtly ladies, to train her in how this worked. From the corner of her eye, Daenerys sees her knight turn away, his head dropping.
He never meant for me to know, she realizes. Jorah does not pretend life is a fairytale. His house is poor, his name disgraced. In the strictest sense, she supposes that he is still married to his so-called expensive wife. He wants to go home, and Daenerys wants the world (and home, a little voice whispers, whatever that might be).
Not that it mattered. Daenerys had told Xaro the truth - Jorah was her advisor and her friend, and in that area, he could never disappoint her. He believes in her, as no one else ever has, and she must gamble that he is not blinded by his own longings. She asks for his advice, even if she can't quite look him in the eye, and decides that perhaps this time she might listen. Her voice is arch and distant as she dismisses him, as is suitable, yet she tries to show that she believes his recommendation is sound.
After all, even if she is able to get ships from the Thirteen, it seems wise to have one of her own.
Nestled in the vast sea of her bed later that night, Daenerys tosses and turns, deeply annoyed at Jorah for still being on her mind. She has half an urge to summon him and shout at him again for keeping her awake. She gets out of bed, the whispery silk of her nightdress floating around her as she crosses the room to her dragons' cages. Viserion hops towards the door and tries to poke his snout through, and Daenerys rubs his nose with a half-hearted smile.
It also does not help that she isn’t used to sleeping alone anymore, but Irri and Doreah were given proper bedchambers, as if they were ladies in waiting. Nor would she especially want to share what Jorah said, or tell anyone else of how those words made her feel. No, this ought to be kept between the two of them. Though perhaps her handmaids would guess what he had revealed as easily as Xaro, and this is a secret that anyone with eyes can see. She sighs and her dragons squawk and flap about, as if they can sense her ill humor.
"If only I could solve my problems by biting people," Daenerys mumbles. She kisses Viserion's nose and moves back to the bed, where she runs her hand over the bed's gold-threaded coverlet before slipping into the soft sheets again.
Perhaps the emotion Jorah revealed seems all the more strange when Daenerys had not really been thinking of men at all. Xaro's proposal left her more bemused than charmed, perhaps because just who her husband would be seemed to matter little. If Drogo could be tamed, so could any man. Where once she was drowned in grief, she feels only indifference. Men are just people who have things she wants and needs and can’t seem to acquire because they look at her and see a silly girl.
Ser Jorah isn't supposed to be one of them. He is something different, something else. Hers, in a way no one else is, not even her handmaids or bloodriders.
Daenerys sighs and rolls over in the crisp bed linens, determined that there must be a cooler spot in the pillows somewhere. Honestly, she could not even imagine Jorah being…romantic. Jorah lived like a priest among the Dothraki. He drank with the men now and then, but he was never inebriated, slurring his words and fighting like the others. He did not indulge himself with the enslaved women in Drogo’s khalasar like others did. Or the Dothraki women who teased him for wearing too many shirts, even though Daenerys had overheard them gossiping about his sharp blue eyes and how well he sat a horse, which now that she considers it might have been a euphemism.
Most prominently, she remembers how gently Jorah has touched her - to guide her, to reassure her, to save her life. Were any of those moments genuine? Or something else entirely?
Or both, something new, that Daenerys has no hope of understanding at all. Something she cannot afford, if she is to be Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.
The frustration ebbs, as if that thought alone can sustain her for the night. Her heavy eyelids close and she slips into dreams that wake her with half-formed images of furs gliding over her skin and strong arms carrying her away.
The next morning Daenerys has a respite, for Ser Jorah has indeed gone to look for a ship bright and early, and she can keep her focus on her goals. Xaro takes her on a tour of Qarth’s kings, who reject her pleas over and over. Her half-slept night is no help, for she feels frayed and torn like a rope ready to break. Without Jorah’s presence, reminding her of who she is, she feels like someone else entirely.
Perhaps it was just as well. Had Jorah heard the Copper King’s suggestion that she could buy a ship with a night in his bed, she could not imagine that he’d be pleased. Still, the long, arduous day would pale in comparison the horrors that greet them in the courtyard. Xaro's guards and even some of her Dothraki, slaughtered like cattle in the courtyard of the palace.
Bells start to clang as she races upstairs to her quarters, where she finds Irri unconscious on the floor, the cord that bruised and scraped her skin broken off around her neck. And her dragons…
Her dragons are gone. Her children. The icy spike of fear that formed when she and Xaro stepped into the courtyard spreads further, sending chills over her skin, making her heart pound. Time moves in a blur as she rips the rope from Irri’s neck and begs her to wake. After her friend blinks and coughs violently, Daenerys moves to the door in a daze and screams for a healer, which summons other servants who take Irri away to treat her injuries and let her rest. Her handmaid cannot remember seeing her attacker, for they crept up from behind while she was working.
Xaro has no idea where her dragons are, which makes him useless to her now. Daenerys has paced and worried and turned the problem over and over in her head, getting nowhere at all. This is all my fault, she thinks, her hands restless, wanting something to twist and crush and mangle.
Then Daenerys hears a familiar step on the stairs, and the smallest bit of relief dawns in her heart.
Dappled sunlight washes over Jorah as he steps through the door, casting him in a golden glow. Her eyes rake over him - he must have rushed from the docks, for his entire chest swells with each breath as he stands strong before her, hand on his sword. She's never seen anything so beautiful, and her mouth suddenly feels a little dry.
“You came back,” Daenerys gasps. The wave of relief at seeing him makes her knees weak, her hands suddenly itch to touch him, as if she has to make sure that he is real, and she is not seeing ghosts like her father.
For Jorah might have been one if they hadn’t quarreled, if he had been in Xaro’s palace while she roamed the city instead of seeking a ship in Qarth’s harbor, he might have been cut down like the rest. The thought feels like a knife in her heart.
Then of course, after everything spills out of her, that her dragons are gone, that Doreah is missing and Irri left for dead, he ruins it. Or perhaps she ruins it, all her anger and hurt and fear looking for the nearest target. They quarrel again, and Daenerys wants to shout that he doesn’t see, that dragons alone cannot bring her a throne, that she might as well be a nameless courtesan in this city.
“You are not your brother. Trust me, Khaleesi.”
The frustration roiling within her finally explodes. “There it is: trust me. And it's you I should trust, Ser Jorah? Only you? I don't need trust any longer. I don't want it and I don't have room for it.”
“You are too young to be so-” His shadow on the floor moves closer, his hand reaching out, and Daenerys suddenly cannot bear for him to touch her.
If he does, she might rush into his arms, just to feel safe, just to feel-
“And you are too familiar!” Daenerys snaps, because perhaps that will head off the buzzy, heady feeling in her veins that doesn’t burn like the fury she felt towards the Spice King or the Silk King or the Copper King. Wisely, Jorah steps back, but the gentleness in his voice is still almost too much to bear.
“Forgive me, Khaleesi. No one can survive in this world without help. No one. Let me help you, please. Tell me how.”
Find my dragons, Daenerys thinks. But what could he possibly do? They are foreigners here, friendless and alone again. Jorah is well skilled in making his way in the world, but something insidious lurks in Qarth’s walls, as shifting as the sands outside. All the ships in the harbor might not help them escape it.
“That was - that was unfair of me.” Daenerys shakes her head. Her thoughts are a messy, chaotic muddle; she cannot get the empty cages and Irri’s body broken on the floor out of her mind. The sun silhouettes his strong shoulders as she turns to him, following the lines of his unlaced shirt and the leather strap across his broad chest.
Across a heart that beats for her, foolishly or not.
“You want to help me.” Daenerys steps closer and lifts her hand to his face, and his cheek warms her palm as her fingers curl over the roughness of his beard. She marvels at his stillness as she moves, the way he doesn’t dare so much as twitch a muscle without her permission. His hand freezes on his sword, even his very breath seems to stop, every inch of him drawn tight as a bow. She cannot say the same, for her hand slightly trembles, only settling as her fingers accidentally brush his earlobe.
How good of Jorah to remind her that he is real as well.
“Then make me forget,” Daenerys demands, and wraps her hand around that strap to drag him closer. Jorah seizes her in an embrace both familiar and unfamiliar all at once. Her mouth opens to his kiss, and suddenly she is utterly grateful that Jorah is a man. Better yet, he is not a boy or a brute or a so-called king who wanted her to beg. His hands are strong and sure through the fabric of her dress, a line of fire growing along her spine where his fingers pass.
Heat fills her belly, not born of familiarity, or of her desperate desire to avoid worse but because Daenerys simply wants this man, at this very moment. She can still ache for someone, she realizes, as she rises on tiptoe, and feels Jorah's arms holding her close. That part of her did not die back in the Dothraki Sea.
Kisses were precious and few with Drogo, but Jorah clearly makes no such economies. His lips seek hers over and over, teasing and playing, making her dizzy until she gasps for breath. And that is before he lifts her into his arms, shocking her with tender pecks to her jaw, her ear, blazing a trail of warmth down to the curve of her shoulder. Daenerys doesn’t quite realize that he’s floated her towards the decadent bed until she nudges it with the back of her calves. The thrill heats her blood even more, to have another man in Xaro’s house, knowing that her host desires her for himself. But a dragon is not a slave, and neither is a bear.
Though Jorah does fall to his knees, sliding her leather leggings down so she can step out of them. As he rises again he stops to press a kiss through the fabric that conceals her sex, then to her belly before he pauses to set his sword aside. Daenerys does not understand how any man’s clothes could be so complicated, when she tries to help Jorah with his belts and plateskirt and various wraps.
“Just leave it on,” she complains as he starts setting about untying the garters on his sleeves, and pulls him to her. She needs more, and they can't seem to move quickly enough. His lips find her neck again, his hands loosen the laces at the back of her tunic. Daenerys sighs at the warmth of his mouth and the bristling of his beard against her delicate skin.
Then her stomach twists with nerves, as he eases her into the middle of the plush bed. She knows Ser Jorah better than any man living, and yet she hardly knows him at all. Will he push her down to the mattress and drag her to her knees? Would he be careful, or tear the silken tunic just because it was a gift from Xaro?
Just as quickly she forgets, as he tugs on the loosened dress and the silk slides down over her breasts. Danerys feels like an offering on the altar of his arms, shocked at how her desire only deepens, at how devours her, his tongue sweeping over her taut, darkened nipple. The sensation seems to travel directly to her sex, suddenly hungry and longing after months of sleep bound by grief and confusion, of not caring if anyone ever touched her again.
When the heat overwhelms the pleasure, she peels the tunic off, revealing herself to him (for the second time, she realizes, though he’d hardly dared look at her…before). Jorah’s eyes gleam with a hunger that she savors, sure that he must be able to see the proof of her desire shining on her thighs by now. She likes the look of him too, golden shirt and all, how the sun turns the hair on his chest to gold, his long, lean frame recovering well from their long ordeal. He is older but time has been more than kind, it seems to her.
Daenerys particularly likes the look of what awaits her between Jorah’s legs, his fine, thick cock ending with a head so red the rubies of this palace would be envious. She knows precisely what to do with that.
“Sit up,” Daenerys orders, and straddles his lap, feeling him thick and heavy against her belly as she drapes her arms around his neck and kisses him hungrily. She breathes in his scent of sweat and sea, twists the curls at the base of his neck in her hands. This feels so different to her already, so strange and free to do what she wants, to be who she wants.
Then Jorah rolls her beneath him on the soft bed, and Daenerys is sure he sees her surprise, for she has been so used to the Dothraki way. She is suddenly painfully aware of how he is so much taller, so much stronger. The sun reveals the pink flushing of his skin and hers, the way her breast rises and falls with each eager breath. How his eyes see her so keenly, and betray his sworn promises.
“You are so - “ Jorah starts to speak, but she shakes her head.
“Don’t,” Daenerys says. Not flattery, not romance, she can’t manage that too, not yet. He wasn’t supposed to be like other men. But she isn’t supposed to be like other women, bedding a man for no reason other than her own desires.
Jorah minds his weight, dipping his head to lay a trail of kisses over her throat, his rough beard stinging at the delicate skin over her collarbones. Daenerys is already tired of delays, she writhes under his touch, grazing his cock with her thigh. Jorah grunts, rather indelicately, and she smiles, a challenge in her eyes. Her smile disappears in a gasp, though, when he touches her, the way Doreah had taught her, the way she has only touched herself. The intimacy of it shocks her, one strong arm around her waist as his thumb sweeps over her slick sex, pressing into the swollen pearl that sends waves of pleasure through her body.
“I need more,” Daenerys whispers hotly. She takes his hand to guide him, that gentle touch not quite enough pressure for her liking. She rocks against his hand, feels the stretch of his fingers just slipping into her entrance. Breathing harder, Daenerys can feel herself tightening, clenching around him. Already so close, and they’ve barely started.
Jorah doesn’t quite understand how this has happened, but he supposes dragons are hardly predictable. Daenerys had been scolding him one minute, angry at the whole world, before she seemed to be dragged down by the weight of her worries.
Then she had touched him - kissed him! - and Jorah wondered if the very air of Qarth was intoxicating them all. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen - though apparently he wasn’t permitted to say so - had fallen into his arms. He had been allowed to kiss her, to hold her and taste the sweet, soft flesh of her breasts and to pleasure her as any lover should.
A better man might have found another way to comfort her, not allowed her to bring him to her bed when she had faced such horrors. Jorah didn’t particularly pride himself on being the better man these days. Certainly not now, faced with the lush soft curves of his khaleesi’s breasts and hips while her thighs part invitingly beneath him. Daenerys’ sex blooms under his touch, rosy and shining with the dew he coaxed from her, and while he’d want nothing more than to taste her, her very insistent hand wraps around his cock and there’s no doubt of what she wants.
Jorah is not a man to deny his queen, but he’s not about to start rutting into her like an animal. He's too old to believe that he's anything more than a convenience to her, but he's also old enough to have learned how to stoke a woman's desire into burning brighter. Though it takes far more self-control than Jorah would admit not to spill like a green boy when Daenerys swipes a thumb across the weeping head of his manhood, a devious smirk he's never seen before curving her lips. He teases her, sliding his cock through her wetness before just barely easing into her very welcoming heat. She rolls her hips as if to take him deeper, but Jorah restrains himself with a clench of his jaw, moving slowly.
“More,” Daenerys tells him, and he gladly complies, watching her tip her head back, and gods but he wants to mark that ivory skin, let everyone see that she’s been with him. He can just imagine a reddish mark peeking from the shoulder of her silk tunic. He doesn't dare, lest she be embarrassed in front of her dwindling khalasar, or these men who don't understand how glorious she truly is.
“More,” she insists again, and Jorah feels his heart almost stutter as he presses deeper, opening her to him, careful, not forcing. Daenerys reaches down, her hand making lazy circles just above where he’s slipped inside her until he feels her shudder, the velvet-soft sheath around him turning hotter, tighter. He’s traveled the whole world but he’s never seen anything so decadent.
When she grasps the back of his neck and drags him down for another hungry kiss, the amber and spice in her perfume mingling with the musky scent of sex nearly undoes him entirely.
“More. Now.” Daenerys commands, and nips his lip with her teeth for good measure. There’s no more teasing in her voice, this is a queen’s demand. Jorah has no intention of disappointing her.
He thrusts deeply, filling her completely, abandoning the cautious approach to let her feel his strength. Daenerys moans deliciously, the sound etching itself into his mind until his very last breath. Her hips stutter as she tries to meet each driving wave, until he shifts, gentling his movements to roll his hips slowly, circling to add pressure where he’s sure it will bring the most pleasure, before thrusting fast and deep again. He can see the wave building, the queen giving way to a greedy dragon beneath the surface, until he feels her nails in his back, nearly tearing through the linen. Daenerys gives a little cry and throbs around him, and he eases back, nearly slipping out of her again. He kisses her, cups her breast to toy with it, anything to draw the pleasure out for her.
“More?” He asks, and he thinks his chest puffs up as she eagerly nods. He lifts her thigh to wrap around his waist this time, sinking like a sword deeper into a place that seemed to be made for him. His queen arches her back, her breasts trembling as if she can feel the little darts of pleasure racing through him. The heat of her is nearly overwhelming now, that hungry look in her eyes, eager for more, is enough that Jorah feels his own peak mounting, creeping up more quickly than he’d like.
Jorah needs a respite, and admittedly with some effort, slips out of her body. Daenerys makes a little sound of complaint, but Jorah is already dipping his head to swirl the dark berry of her nipple with his tongue. He lays a trail of more open-mouthed kisses over her belly, dipping below her navel (where it seems she's just a bit ticklish) and pausing just where the silvery curls surrounding her sex begin. The scent of her makes his mouth water, and when his tongue sweeps through her nectar-drenched sex, he finds the taste of her finer than all the wines in their host's cellar.
"What are you - oh," his Khaleesi gasps softly, and Jorah can't help feeling a little smug that he gets to be the first man to pleasure her like this, to tease her little bud between his lips, to sip at the the chalice of her most secret place. Daenerys watches him work only briefly, before her head falls back onto the pillows. The soft moans she makes as he finds each sensitive spot are the most beautiful song he's ever heard. The queen who commands seems to melt away, leaving a woman eager for satisfaction...which she nearly gets. But not quite, because Jorah wants to be surrounded by her when she finishes.
Daenerys is eager to have him back. and Jorah barely has time to press his cock inside her again before her arms wrap around him to pull him closer. Feeling desperate for his own release, Jorah holds back nothing now, filling her to the hilt, his own groans a chorus with hers. Their flesh practically slaps together, until Daenerys clenches around him, her voice breaking as she freezes just briefly, her mouth fallen open in bliss. Ecstasy colors her cheeks like a sunset, as her back arcs like a bow. The look in her eyes, no longer hard and hurting but almost astonished, he thinks he will remember to his last day.
Jorah knows that he needs to stop himself from spilling inside her, but Daenerys refuses to let him go. Her thighs, strong from months of riding and walking, press against his waist, and somehow as she digs in her heels she lifts her hips in a way that seems to envelop him more completely, as if they've become one single, pleasure-minded beast. He loses himself in kissing her, trying to etch the taste of her plump lips onto every corner of his mind. It's far too soon before he simply cannot fight anymore, and his pumping hips stutter as the knot of pleasure at the base of his spine finally explodes.
Jorah doesn't know when he closed his eyes, but he opens them to see his Khaleesi's smile for the first time in ages. For once, he feels he can return it, the sensation of it stretching across his face nearly as long forgotten as the thrill of bedding a beautiful woman. Daenerys nudges him into lying back so she can nestle in his arms, her cheek resting against his chest. Jorah allows himself an all too tender kiss to the part of her hair, as his hands can't resist a few more caresses of her silken skin.
Part of him knows he's done something foolish. His heart though, can hear nothing of the sort.
Daenerys stretches out, loose-limbed as the cats that lounge in the palace’s grounds as the breeze through the sun shades cools her, the warm weight of Jorah's hand settled across her back and sweat dampened linen under her cheek. The basics were the same, a man and a woman, but she felt like some new book of secrets had been opened to her, with new, tempting diversions on each page. Easier pleasure, that she didn't have to crawl over shattered glass and steel blades to finally find. True, bedding her only advisor might not have been wise, behaving as impulsive and entitled as the Thirteen believed her to be. Yet she can't quite bring herself to regret her choice, perhaps she can blame Qarth for being too luxurious, their beds too soft, their air too heavily scented with flowers and citrus. Yet her refuge with Jorah is only temporary, and when the rest of the world drifts back into clarity, the empty cages across the room seem to mock her.
How could this have happened? Who had hurt Irri? And where could her dragons be?
How could she want to hide from all of it, the silence in the room, the blood-soaked courtyard, wrapped up in Jorah’s arms, breathing in the scent of his skin?
Daenerys looks at Jorah's sword resting at the foot of the bed, and shudders as a glimpse of a body she had rushed past suddenly flashes red in her vision. This time, though, she realizes something strange had happened in that courtyard. How did I not notice? Why did Xaro not point it out -
“Magic,” she announces, sitting up. “We have to go to the House of the Undying.”
“Khaleesi?” The lines in Jorah’s brow deepen. He doesn't seem to know what to do with his hands, finally running one through his hair.
“There was no fight, Jorah, most of the guards, and the Dothraki, they still had their arakhs on their belts. Someone used magic to kill them. The warlocks have magic. And where are the warlocks? Pyat Pree told us at the party.” As she slides off the bed to gather her clothes from the floor, Daenerys realizes the only confusing part - did the warlocks take Doreah too? What would they need of her?
Daenerys takes a deep breath, willing herself to concentrate on her dragons. They will find Doreah. She will have answers to all of her questions, even those barely forming in her mind about what Jorah might want besides seeing her on the Iron Throne...and what she might want in return.
For oh, Daenerys will have armies. But like ships, surely it is wise to have a knight of her own. She might even be a bit more willing to entertain whatever other words he is not quite saying, but only when she has her children in her arms again.
Daenerys tosses Jorah's sword and belt in his direction and stands as proud as she can, for a woman who isn't wearing a stitch of clothing. “Get your armor, Ser. We’re going to find my dragons.”