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“Where is it?”
Asha widens her eyes in confusion. “Where is what, my lord?”
“You know full well what, wench!” Stannis growls. “Where is it?!”
Last night, Asha stole into his tent and stole Lightbringer. And now Stannis has found out.
“Safe.” Asha admits, smirking as Stannis’ expression grows steadily more livid.
“Where?”
“I think that is all you need to know, my lord.”
“Do you think I will not have you whipped?”
“Do you think any torture could pry the location from me?” Asha spreads her arms. “Do your worst, my lord, but I will go to my grave knowing that you will never hold your precious sword again.”
Stannis snarls and turns away. He grinds his teeth, audibly, a dreadful noise.
“Now, if you were to remove these chains …” Asha says pointedly.
Stannis pulls the key from a chain about his neck and frees her.
“A good start,” Asha kicks the chains aside.
“A start?” Stannis eyes her suspiciously. “What else could you want?”
Asha considers him. “Well, for a start, I’d like to see how you pleasure yourself.”
Stannis’ face is a wonder to behold. He freezes first, stuck in that moment. Then he goes red with rage. “You –”
“Your sword, my lord. Think of it, lost forever. Your men, loosing faith …” Asha puts a hand to her heart. “The thought is rather chilling.”
Stannis glares. “You would have me … debase myself … before you? Is that it?”
“Debase yourself? Is that how you think of it? My lord, every man takes himself in hand in the night. Even the septons.” Asha smirks. “Unless the rumors are true, and you don’t –”
His hands are at his belt, undoing clasps and knots. “I am as much of a man as any,” Stannis snarls, “if you wish to see me humiliated before returning my property, so be it.”
He’s rather larger than Asha had anticipated. A man with his ambitions and insecurities, she would have thought him a man of average or lesser length. He’s hardly the largest she’s ever come across, but he’s large enough to attract her interest.
Asha had thought only to humiliate him, but she’s rethinking her strategy now.
Stannis brings himself off quickly, no doubt trying to get things over faster. He keeps his eyes shut, brow furrowed in concentration.
“I think not, my lord,” Asha smiles wickedly. “Look at me. Don’t go elsewhere.”
Stannis does as instructed, though he looks at Asha with hatred in his eyes, not lust or passion.
Well, Asha can work on that. After all, this is only the first time.
He spills his seed, slumps, cleans his hands in a basin of melted snow.
“Where is my sword, wench?” he demands.
“Ask me on the morrow, my lord, I must … consider my options.” Asha grins at his look of outrage. He can do nothing; she has him.
~*~
The next night she has him on his knees, has him with his face buried between her thighs. He’s not too dreadful, a few instructions and he improves well enough. Better than some of the louts she’s taken to bed and drive out in disgust after a few disappointing thrusts.
She makes him refrain from achieving completion himself, until she is sated. Even then, sometimes she torments him, makes him wait, watches him squirm and suffer.
He does not beg. Even sweating and shaking, cock leaking all over his clothes, he does not beg.
Asha yearns for that.
When he begins to threaten again, that’s when Asha fucks him. She takes him on his back, rides him, and it’s obvious he’s never been treated like this before. That surprises her, she thought for certain that red woman the others all whisper about in hushed tones would have given Stannis a good time. But perhaps she was more sensuous and soft with him. And his wife probably only knew as much as any proper highborn lady, to lay there and take whatever he gave her (which can’t have been much, judging from how much direction Asha had to give him on using his tongue.)
Asha coaxes moan after moan from Stannis and then, finally, at long last, he begs.
He doesn’t ask about Lightbringer that night. Asha falls asleep with a smile on her face, and a pleasant ache between her legs.
~*~
Asha waits until she is certain, until she’s had Stannis in her a dozen times and the time of her moon’s blood has come and gone. Then she tells him where she hid the sword, smiling softly as he sends two trusted men to fetch it.
“And what’s to stop me from taking off your head as soon as Lightbringer is back in my hands?” he snaps.
She smiles, lays her hands on her belly. “You would slay your own child, ser? I think not.”
Stannis’ outrage is a pleasure to behold. Asha revels in it, in the power she will hold over this man, the power she will wield through him. She can practically feel it already.
He seems tempted to give her to the flames, even now, but with each passing day of her moonblood not coming, Stannis’ rage begins to take on a new aspect.
A raven arrives, a bedraggled thing half frozen from one of the latest storms. It’s a message from Castle Black: Queen Selyse has died of a chill, Shireen is healthy and strong, Melisandre has seen visions in her flames that Stannis must wed again, soon.
Asha keeps her laughs to herself, and visits Stannis’ tent the next day.
“Marry me, my lord,” she says, taking his hand in hers. He recoils from her touch.
“Leave me, wench. I am in mourning. Have you no shame?”
“Says the man who’s put a bastard in my belly. So like your elder brother now, are you not, with a whore and a bastard of your very own?”
Stannis’ eyes flash with fury, and his arm twitches as if to strike her. He holds himself back, and Asha smirks: he cannot strike her, even now, and he shall never strike her for the rest of her life.
“Ours was not a happy union, but I tried to do my duty. She gave me stillbirths, and a daughter, a daughter who nearly died herself, a daughter whose husband will hate her for the illness she bears on her face.” Stannis huddles in the furs, looks not like a king at all but a tired, tired man.
Asha sits down beside him, tugs some of the furs around herself.
“I was … kind to her. I was as good a husband as she could have hoped for. But I fear … not good enough.” Stannis stares at the tent flap.
Asha lets the moment pass, then takes his hand again.
He stares at her, gaunt and wide-eyed. Despite Stannis’ thinning hair he looks rather young now, lost and helpless. Asha remembers vaguely that both his parents perished when he was barely more than a child.
Asha kisses his knuckles. “I shall give you sons, my lord,” she whispers.
Stannis does not pull away.