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1.
They’d known each other for all of three days when he’d first planted his head in her lap like they’d been friends forever. There she’d been, waiting her turn in the make-up trailer, when he’d collapsed on to the sofa beside her, swiveling in one smooth motion to plop his head directly onto her lap.
“Hello, Richard,” she said on a laugh.
“Hiya, sweetheart,” he said back.
It was a bit strange to act as if nothing was amiss with an almost-stranger in your lap, but she managed, more or less. He chattered with the woman doing Harry’s make-up – Rena, she thought her name was – flipped through his phone, laughed and made jokes. All while Emilia had no idea what to do with her hands.
“He likes it when you play with his hair,” Rena had finally said, after Harry had vacated her chair and Richard still hadn’t gotten up. Emilia had thought Rich might be embarrassed about that, but he grinned up at her, unrepentant.
“It’s true, I do,” he confirmed.
“Is that a request?” she asked. He shrugged, and she felt the motion of his shoulders against her thighs.
“More like an invitation,” he said.
He does it with everyone – male or female, young or old, ugly, pretty and everything in between. She knows it’s a purely hedonistic act on his part, no intent inherent in it. Once, Harry told her, he even did it to Bean, flopping down beside him, head in Sean’s lap, his grin daring Sean to pet him. Amazingly, Sean had done it, albeit for three seconds before he shoved Richard off and told him to go pester someone else. Emilia had found herself wishing she’d been there for it, that she wasn’t the newcomer, having to play catch-up along with Michelle. At first, it had been a bit like being the newest kid in school and having no one to talk to and no idea where to sit at lunch. Most everyone else already knew each other; they’d filmed an entire pilot together, been these characters before. Even more strangely, they’d known another Daenerys entirely.
It’s one of Richard’s favorite ways to tease her, actually. Sometimes he calls her Dany 2.0, saying that Dany 1.0 never would have gotten the fish at lunch, or referring to Tamzin as Original Flavor Dany. Oddly enough, those jokes make her feel more a part of everything than the other way around. His easy way of ribbing her feels a bit like being anointed by the most popular boy in school. He knows all the ins and outs, knows every actor, every crewmember, no matter how low on the totem pole. He’s everyone’s best friend, and he loves to share, she’s learning.
She can almost forget she hasn’t been here all along.
2.
Sophie loves to beauty shop him, as he calls it, though only when Sophie isn’t anywhere near to hear and get embarrassed. She’ll stand behind his chair for ages, carding through his hair with her fingers, his head gently lolling under the pressure of her touch. Emilia suspects Sophie has more than a bit of a crush on him. She can’t blame her, either. Richard treats her so sweetly, so gently.
“She’s madly in love with you, you know,” Emilia tells him one day, when she stands behind him and buries her hands in his hair and he laughingly says she’s beauty shopping him. “Sophie is, I mean.”
“Gives her someone good to practice on,” he says lazily, leaning back into her hands. “Someone safe.”
Emilia smiles. She wishes she’d had someone like Richard to practice on when she was 15. The heartache she could have avoided… She considers telling him so, but decides against it. Maybe some other time.
"Hey, so you're doing the same thing," he points out, as if it's just occurred to him. "Does that make you madly in love with me as well?"
“You wish.” She circles her thumbs on the back of his neck and he moans appreciatively.
“You’ve a gift for this,” he says. “Please do it as often as possible.”
After that, she doesn’t notice him with other people as often. He always seems to come find her when he wants a bit of attention, some cosseting. If she were a more sentimental sort, she might take that to mean something.
3.
“What about these?” She holds a pair of gloves out for his inspection. He barely even looks at them before grimacing and shaking his head. “What?” she demands. “They’re on sale!”
“If my daughter gave those to me, I would disown her,” Richard tells her. “You’re hopeless.” She makes a face at him.
“I told you I was terrible at buying birthday gifts for my father, that’s precisely why you’re here. Besides, you’re a snob.”
“I am an aesthete,” he corrects her.
“You’re a hedonist,” she says. “And a sybarite. And a snob.”
“The first two I take no exception to, but that last… I’m no snob, pet. Look, take this scarf.” He pulls a scarf from a nearby rack, one with an obscene price tag. “I don’t prefer it because of the label. I prefer it because of how my senses respond to it. It feels luxurious, the perfect weight, soft to the touch. This won’t ever itch or chafe. This is the sort of scarf that feels like a caress on your throat.” He drapes the scarf around her neck, pulls it slowly, torturously across her skin. She can’t deny it feels like a caress indeed, one that leaves her light-headed.
“The more you touch it, the softer it gets,” he says, his voice lower, smoother. Almost like a caress itself. “And what’s the point of having something you don’t love to touch?” He grins. They’re completely innocuous words, but somehow he manages to make them sound seductive, almost filthy.
“I see,” she manages.
“Here,” he says, pushing a pair of gloves down the counter to her. “Get him these.”
She’s still staring at the two pairs of gloves, deliberating, when the shopkeep comes back to check on her. The ones he recommended are most definitely not on sale; she could almost buy a car for less. And she hates to give him the satisfaction. He’ll be unbearable.
“Have you made a decision?” the woman behind the counter asks. Emilia hesitates, then grudgingly pushes Richard’s pair forward.
“I’ll take these, thank you.” Richard smirks at her. “And you shut up,” she tells him.
“So do you have a nickname, or does everyone always call you Emilia?” he asks, once they’re out in the brisk air, heading down the street. It’s getting cold already. She’s half-tempted to go back and get that scarf, but he’d truly become impossible if she did, so she hunches into her collar instead.
“Some people call me Milly,” she tells him. “But only people I like are allowed to.”
“Am I allowed to?” he asks. Her instinct is to tease him, say she’s not sure and they’ll just have to wait and see, but something about the look on his face stays her impulse.
“You’re allowed,” she says, and she’s immediately rewarded by his grin. It makes him look like a little boy on Christmas. She can’t help but grin back, even though she’s aware they must look idiotic, standing on a street corner, grinning at each other like loons.
“I’m, um,” she finally says, glancing away hastily before she does something stupid like throw herself at him. “I’m this way.”
“And I’m the other,” he answers. “You’ll be all right on your own?” She wants to roll her eyes at that, but she can’t deny it’s a bit endearing.
“Of course.”
“Of course,” he echoes, wrinkling his nose at her and smiling. Then he quickly leans forward, his lips brushing along her cheekbone and leaving a trail of sparks in their wake. “See you round, Mils.”
He’s halfway across the street before she remembers to raise her hand and say goodbye.
4.
There’d been no details, no reasoning or preamble. When she picked up the phone, he just said, “Mils, I need you,” like they’re that sort of friends. Like he can call with no explanations and she’ll come running with no questions. The bugger of it is that’s exactly what she does.
“All right,” she says when he opens his door, her arms crossed in a manner that she hopes comes off as intimidating. “What, may I ask, was so urgent that I had to- Rich, your hand!” There’s a bandage around his palm, stark white against his skin. It couldn’t possibly be bad – he looks completely fine otherwise – but that doesn’t stop her heart from taking a little too long between beats.
“Sword fighting,” he says, slashing his bandaged hand back and forth in mock battle. “Broke another blade today. My sixth.”
“Well done,” she offers drily.
“Thanks!” he beams, as if it were an entirely sincere comment, and she laughs, lingering nerves making the sound come out shaky even though he’s obviously fine. “Anyway, I cut my hand. Six stitches.”
“One for each broken sword,” she notes. “And this has what to do with me?”
“I need you to wash my hair.”
“You couldn’t have gone to the hair and make-up trailer for that?”
“They work so hard already,” he says. “Plus I didn’t think of that. Mils, come on, I can’t get it wet and I’m desperate for a wash. Will you help? Pleeeease? I’m warning you, I’ll whine as long as I have to if it gets me clean hair.”
“All right, all right, I surrender!” she says, holding her hands up in the air. “How do you want to do this?”
“Kitchen sink’s probably easiest. It’s got a thingy.” He heads out of the room, muttering chair, chair, chair under his breath.
“A thingy?” she calls after him.
“Yeah.” He emerges from his bedroom holding a wooden chair. “A spigot spraying thingy.”
“Of course,” she says. “I should have known.” He grins at her. He’s incorrigible. She should tell him so more often. “I’ll get shampoo and all that?”
“Please. You know where the bathroom is.” She does, but the one other time she was here, it was with the others, all of them meeting up at Richard’s before heading out for trivia night at the local pub, Lannisters and Targaryens vs. Starks and Baratheons. She hadn’t dared investigate then. This time she lingers, holding his cologne bottle to her nose to smell it, rubbing her fingertips over the unbelievably soft bathrobe hanging on the back of the door. It’s much cleaner than she usually expects a man’s bathroom to be.
“Found it?” he calls, and she hurriedly grabs shampoo from the shower, twitching a towel from the rack on her way out. He’s in the chair already, slouching casually with his neck against the edge of the counter. His feet are planted wide; she has to step around his knee to place the bottle on the counter. Of course, she could have chosen the other side, rather than the corner, and given herself more room. Why she didn’t isn’t something that bears closer examination at the moment.
“Lean forward,” she commands. He obeys, holding still while she loops the towel around his neck, draping it carefully over his shoulders. “Now you have a heroic cape to go with your heroic wound. Back.” Again, he obeys, and it sets warmth unfurling in her belly. His eyes are closed, his head tilted back to show his throat, his body completely relaxed in submission. She wonders if hairdressers get used to this, or if they’re forever surprised at the trust with which people give themselves over to their care.
The water is cold, so she lets it run a bit. It’s not often she gets a chance to study him unnoticed. He’d been clean-shaven the first time she met him, but his beard is coming in now, reddish and bristly. She brushes his curls back from his forehead. There’s a tiny patch of the softest skin imaginable at his ears and her fingertips keep straying there without her consent.
“You smell like my cologne,” he says without opening his eyes and she blushes so fiercely it almost makes her cheeks hurt. She considers making some sort of an excuse – I knocked it over! I thought it was hand soap! – but she’d probably just dig herself even deeper. Instead she decides to retaliate.
“So tell me how it is you decided to call me of all people.” If she’d thought he’d be at all embarrassed by being put on the spot, she was wrong. He just smiles and the hint of a dimple appears on his cheek, a dimple that she suddenly longs to touch. Hell, she might like to lick it. God, Emilia, get a hold of yourself, she thinks.
The water is warm on her fingers as she pushes them through his hair. She has to lean over him to wet his hair entirely. It makes her distinctly aware of the intimacy of their positions, pressed as she is against his side, her breasts practically lying on his face. She’s not sure how she’d never noticed this when getting her own hair cut. Doing her best not to smother him with her tits, she squeezes out a dollop of shampoo, massages it into his scalp in small circles, standing up on her toes to get a little bit more height.
“You’ve a scar,” he says, startling her. “Right there.” He touches a gentle index finger to the underside of her arm, right where the skin is soft and ticklish. It takes everything she has in her not to shiver and squirm away. “How’d you get it?”
“Fight with my cousin. She took one of my Boyzone CDs without asking.”
“Did you teach her a lesson?”
“Of course. She stabbed me with a nail file, though.”
“And here I thought I was tough with my sword-fighting,” Richard grins, looking a little impressed.
She smiles. “It was an accident,” she says. It’d been her own fault, actually. She should have known better than to tackle someone holding a sharp piece of metal. She’d pretty much stayed away from fighting after that.
She swipes suds away from his hairline with careful fingers. He watches her through slitted eyes, a contented cat being pet, and it makes her the most impossibly appealing sort of nervous. When his hand grazes her thigh, she jumps, sending a sluice of water down his cheek, and he smirks at her.
“Shut up,” she tells him.
“I haven’t said anything,” he says, still smirking. “I’ve been quiet as a church mouse.”
“I can hear you thinking,” she informs him tartly, and the self-satisfaction on his face is replaced by something hot and challenging.
“Doubtful,” is all he says, but the look he gives her is so intense, so full of suggestion, she can’t keep her knees from trembling.
“W-why is that?” she manages. She has a feeling she knows. Things are starting to make a different kind of sense, given that look on his face, given everything, but something in her needs to hear it from him.
He sits up in one smooth motion, pulling the towel she’d placed so carefully about his neck up and over his head, rubbing briskly. Then he stands, trapping her between his body and the cabinets behind. The towel hits the counter with a wet sound and he reaches past her to turn off the faucet she hadn’t even realized was still running. She should be embarrassed by how distracted she is, but frankly, she can’t bring herself to care.
“Must I spell it out?” he asks, after such length that if she weren’t positively desperate to know the answer to her question, she might have forgotten she’d asked it.
“If you’d be so kind.” She lifts her chin. It passes as a gesture of obstinacy, but he’s so close to her now that she has to look up to see into his eyes anyhow, so close that her breasts brush against his chest when she takes a deep breath, which only makes her need the breath all the more.
What she wants him to say, she doesn’t know. But his kiss is better than any answer could have been, sweeter than any words he might have said. Water drips from his hair, slides down her forehead and across the crescents of her eyelids, gathering in the wells of her ears. She doesn’t care. It’s not like any other first kiss she’s ever had. Usually they start off somewhere in the vicinity of chaste, closed-lipped and sweetly seeking. Richard starts out licking her lips, entreating them to open so he can lick his way inside and taste her tongue. “Mils,” he breathes before he kisses her again, and again, until she’s dizzy from it.
5.
Of course he would pick today. He couldn’t have come to visit the Dothraki set on a day she was wearing silks and finery, or riding her Silver – something she’s gotten quite good at, if she does say so herself. No, he makes an unannounced visit on the day she’s got a fake horse heart in her hands, fake blood viscous and shiny on her chin and chest as she tears it apart with her teeth like a wild dog. Lovely. Emilia supposes it could have been worse. He could have come on a day she was naked. Though…no, this is still worse. At least naked is a good look for her. He’s never going to want to kiss her again.
He chats with the crew, affably shakes hands with Harry and Iain as she gets cleaned up, looking for all the world as if this is just a general visit, a trip to the other side of the world, as it were. But when Richard looks at her, a sweat prickles up her spine and she knows he’s there for her.
She’s still picking bits of the fake heart out of her teeth when she surrenders to the inevitable and joins him and Harry. His eyes follow her as she approaches, lazy and warm on her, and she flushes, unable to stop herself from staring at his mouth. God, the number of times she’s thought of his mouth since the other night, his lips and tongue on hers, of all the other places they might still explore, hot and soft, slip-sliding in shadowed places… Her cheeks flaming, she snaps her eyes up to his and mentally commands her pulse to slow, to little avail. He grins wolfishly, as if he knows precisely what she was thinking. Or, even more dangerous, as if he was doing some thinking of his own.
“There’s the fierce tigress,” Harry says fondly, swiping a stray trace of fake blood from her shoulder. She straightens and does her best to fake enough composure to give him a genuine smile.
“That looked ghastly,” Richard says. “What was it?”
“Gummy bears,” she answers. “Or so they tell me. Not sure I trust the sadistic bastards.”
“At least you’re not getting a molten hat.” Harry winces delicately and she laughs.
“No complaints here,” Richard offers cheerily. “I get a wicked wolf and victory in battle. I’m awesome.”
“Just you wait,” she says, waggling a warning finger at him and realizing too late that a glob of fake blood is lodged under the nail. “I’m sure there’s something gruesome lying in wait for you in one of the other books.” Richard shrugs and grins, unconcerned.
“As long as it’s not food-related. You’ve got a bit of horse heart next to your incisor.” She grimaces and covers her mouth with her hand, prodding the bit free with her tongue. She tries to spit it on the ground as discreetly as possible. Judging by the amusement on Richard’s face, she fails.
“I never want to eat anything again,” she says, after Harry’s been called for some lighting adjustments. Her mouth feels like the bottom of someone’s shoe.
“How about I make you dinner?” Richard offers. “Get that taste out of your mouth.” Surprised, she looks up at him. Part of her registers the fact that he waited until Harry was gone to ask. So he wouldn’t have to invite Harry and it will just be us, a tiny voice in her head says. She firmly tells the voice to shut up.
“You sure it won’t be worse than the gummy heart?”
“I’ll have you know I’m an excellent cook,” he says, affecting an air of mock affront.
“You know, from any other man, that would be a line, but from you, I believe it.”
“Anything is a line if you look at it the right way, sweetheart,” he drawls, low and smooth, and the promise in his voice makes her shiver.
“All right,” she hears herself saying. “When?”
“Eight sharp. Bring wine. Something red.”
One of the hair mistresses arrives then, Amy, to fuss with Emilia’s platinum wig and twitch stray locks back into place. “Hullo Richard,” she says warmly. “Don’t usually see you over on this side.”
“Bit of time to kill,” he says, and gives Amy a wink. The pang of jealousy Emilia feels is ridiculous, she knows. Beyond ridiculous. She’s acting like an adolescent.
“She’s so lovely as Dany, isn’t she?” Amy sighs, giving Emilia that look she’s come to identify as the Daenerys Look. Emilia never gets that look as herself, that starry-eyed smile akin to that of a child seeing a Disney princess for the first time.
“Quite,” Richard agrees, but there’s some strange reservation in his voice, a critical edge to his gaze. Suddenly, surprisingly, she feels far more self-conscious than she did standing before him with a smile full of horse heart.
“Emilia!” someone calls. “We need you back on set.” It’s a reprieve. She can’t recall her mood ever plummeting this precipitously.
“I should go,” she tells Richard, smoothing her wig, adjusting her costume, anything to avoid his eyes.
“Tonight?” he prompts. She chances a glance up and the critical edge is gone, only warm openness on his face. She could not be any more confused.
“Of course.” The director calls her again and she starts, practically bolts away. When she looks back, Richard is still there, watching her intently. Flustered, she flubs a couple of lines until, mercifully, her blocking has her facing away from him. When she turns back and looks over, he’s gone.
6.
“I missed your brown hair today.”
He’s not looking at her when he says it. She could have sworn he wasn’t even paying attention to her, so it takes her a minute to process.
“You did?” she asks, surprised. He moves to stand in front of her, looking at her with that expression of gentle amusement he has so often. The soft touch of his hand on her knee has her shifting her legs to the side so he can get a wooden spoon out of the drawer she’s sitting over.
“You look more like you this way,” he says once he’s got the spoon. He curls one finger off the handle, lifts the loose bit of hair that’s lying on her forehead and lets it slide out of his grip. It takes her a moment to collect herself; she’s still feeling a little light-headed even after he moves away, peering into some saucepan bubbling away on the stove. She should probably go a little easier on the wine, especially since they haven’t even gotten to the dinner part of dinner yet.
“Most people seem to prefer me as Daenerys,” she says when she feels a little more normal. She shrugs as if it doesn’t bother her, and mostly it doesn’t, but there’s nonetheless a strange tightness in her chest when he makes an impatient sound.
“Most people are idiots,” he says, more harshly than she thinks she’s ever heard him say anything before. So that’s what today was about. “Here, try this.” Reflexively, she opens her mouth for the spoon he’s aiming at her, glad enough to be unable to talk since she might only say ridiculous, embarrassing things right now, things far too emotionally raw by half. The tip of his index finger brushes her chin, just barely, as he hovers his hand under the spoon at her lips to catch any drips.
“Good?” he asks, searching her eyes.
“Perfect,” she answers. Part of her knows she doesn’t just mean the sauce.
She eats entirely too much at dinner. With Richard, it’s far too easy to eat too much, drink too much, say too much, feel too much. He’s not someone who believes in holding back. He’s got a story for each dish, a history for every ingredient. It’s more of an experience than a meal. And a hell of a lot better than a fake horse heart.
“Richard, I couldn’t possibly eat any more,” she says when he disappears into the kitchen with their cleaned plates and comes back with some dessert that looks decadent enough to be illegal in several countries.
“You have to!” he says, and there’s real dismay in his voice. “Come on, one bite.”
“Rich, I’ll explode.”
“One bite never killed anyone. Come onnnn.” She’s got half a notion he’ll start up with the here-comes-the-choo-choo-train routine in another five seconds if she doesn’t relent.
“Fine,” she sighs. “But just one.”
“One is all it takes,” he says, grinning, triumphant. He digs a forkful of the dessert up, ignoring her when she says it’s entirely too big, and holds it in front of her.
“You have to take it all in one bite,” he warns, before tipping the fork into her open, waiting mouth. “It’s important to get the different textures all together, and let the tastes layer on each other. Taste that, the bit of salt under the sweet?” She nods, letting it melt over her tongue. He looks at her with careful eyes, watches her mouth. Then he slides the fork into his own mouth, sucks off every last bit that she’d left on the tines and licks his lips. “Sinful, isn’t it?”
Jesus. “Yes,” she says, barely more than a whisper.
This time, she’s the one kissing him. He groans into her mouth, slides his tongue along hers, and God, it makes her feel like she’s turning inside out. A mouth like his shouldn’t even be possible. He tastes of salt under the sweet and she never wants to stop, not ever.
7.
“Is it six already?” Emilia groans. The sky outside is dull blue, barely streaked with pink. It is entirely too early for any normal person to be awake. Of course, she barely slept last night – Richard saw to that – which might have something to do with her current unhappiness at being woken.
“Sorry, love,” Richard says. He sits on her side of the bed and she lets the dip of the mattress pull her against his hip. She prefers to wake up to him mussed and sleep-warm, pulling her into the crook of his arm drowsily, rather than sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling on his shoes. “I’d much rather come back to bed with you.”
“I suppose I should get up,” she sighs.
“No, no, stay. Sleep in. I’ll be back by noon. I’ll bring sustenance.” He hardly has to talk her into it. She snuggles down deeper into the covers, smiling sleepily at his kiss on her forehead.
When she wakes again, the sky is lighter, birds making themselves known outside the window. She stretches, sliding her limbs against his sheets – ridiculously expensive, high-quality sheets, no doubt. He may not have a television or more than one frying pan, but damned if he’ll skimp on sheets. She tugs the sheet off the bed and wraps it about herself, tucking it securely under her arms. Normally she isn’t particularly prim or demure, but something about spending a good portion of her days completely naked on set in front of mostly strangers makes her far less inclined to be uncovered in her time off. Richard teases her about it, tugging the sheet up under her chin and kissing her on the tip of her nose. “My Victorian lady,” he calls her, and really, something about that is enough to keep her doing it, if she’s honest.
She’s not snooping, precisely, when she wanders into his closet. There’s nothing she’s particularly trying to discover. She’s just exploring. Investigating. Being a bloody teenage girl, really. His clothes all smell like him, rich and spicy-sweet. She trails her fingers over sleeves and cuffs and hems until she comes to his jumpers, a full meter of them, cashmere and silk and rich wool, hung side by side and all unspeakably soft. Her fingers have grown rough from handling her horse on set and they snag on the fabric, making a soft crackling sound. Giving in to temptation, she gathers an armful and presses her face to them, breathing deep, Richard’s smell flooding her system and making her miss him so terribly it’s as if she didn’t part with him mere hours before.
Her fingers unerringly find the softest jumper, a beautiful cashmere the color of a mourning dove. The sheet puddles around her feet as she pulls the jumper over her head, her hair crackling to static-filled life. It’s much too large for her; the hem brushes her at mid-thigh and her fingertips barely peek out from the cuffs. She raises one covered hand to her cheek, rubs it across her skin. She’ll go back to bed wearing this, she decides. Something for him to take off her when he comes back.
8.
“So you’re clearly getting laid,” Roxanne says to Emilia one morning. They’d been lying around on pillows, Dany and her handmaidens, waiting out some interminable delay that involved ADs running everywhere and several radio conversations, chatting and yawning and wondering what might be for lunch. When Roxanne’s words startle her out of her reverie, Emilia realizes she’d been clutching a silken pillow to her stomach, stroking the soft fabric and staring off into space with what must have been an expression so dreamy as to seem stoned. Amrita and Sarita look like they’ve arrived at the same conclusion, judging by their arch expressions when Emilia darts her eyes at each in turn.
“Is it that obvious?” Emilia moans, burying her face in the pillow.
“Yes!” they chorus, all three of them, laughing.
“You’ve been wandering around in a daze like someone hit you in the back of the head with a cricket bat,” Amrita says, and Sarita nods emphatically.”Only one answer for that.”
“Is it mind-blowing?” Roxanne asks. “Because honestly, the way you’ve been looking, it seems like it must be.”
Emilia thinks of last night, how she’d barely gotten inside the door before Richard had his hands and mouth on her, how he’d slid down her body like water, tugging her pants to the floor with hooked fingers and hitching her thigh up against his ear, making her come twice before she even had her shoes off. She’s drawn up like a bowstring, so squirmy and oversensitive that she can barely sit still, and all she can think about is how soon she can go back to his flat and do it all over again. She’d always thought she had a healthy sexuality. Now she thinks she barely scratched the surface of what she could feel, of how very much she could want.
“You could say that,” she allows drily. Then she gives in and whispers conspiratorially, “Most mornings I can barely walk.”
“Ooh, lucky,” Roxanne sighs, envy in her voice. “I haven’t had that in ages. I’m turning into a lonely old cat lady.”
“He?” Sarita asks curiously. “She? Either, neither, both?”
“He,” Emilia says. Roxanne cocks an eyebrow at her.
“Someone we know?” she presses. The immediate color flooding Emilia’s cheeks gives an answer clear as day and they all laugh at her.
“Well, whoever he is, whatever he’s doing,” Roxanne tells her, “he should keep it up.”
“Is that your expert opinion?” Emilia asks, giggling.
“Girl, it’s a fact.”
“It is known,” Sarita agrees solemnly, and the giggling turns to full-blown laughter. They laugh so hard that an AD has to come and calm them down before they can start the scene and it’s three takes before they can manage it without breaking.
9.
She can’t say she expected it. Even as he’d walked his fingers across her thigh under the table, slid them under the filmy fabric of her skirt to tease at the edge of her knickers, she had thought he was playing, that he’d grin and withdraw. They’re in public. Moreover, they’re at a publicity event, their costars sitting along the table on his other side. And the phalanx of reporters with cameras in front of them…well, she would have assumed those would have been something of a deterrent.
Luckily she was wrong.
She stiffens when his middle finger traces a delicate line over her. It’s the barest amount of pressure, so light – only made lighter by the fabric between her body and his hand – that it makes her squirm, feeling almost ticklish. He props his chin on his other hand, looking far more casual than he has any right to. The bastard. She resolves to stay still, not to respond at all. Her hips betray her though, tilting up to increase the pressure of his hand. For a second, she’s afraid he’ll pull back, that he only meant to tease her. But he settles his finger, circles it firmly, his rakish grin glinting in the corner of her eye, and she relaxes into his touch with the most inconspicuous sigh she can manage. He’s not all bastard, at least.
It’s the quietest she’s ever been when she comes, her toes curling in her expensive, uncomfortable public-appearance shoes. The squeeze of her thighs traps his hand there and he keeps his fingers firmly against her, applies just enough pressure to keep her from truly flying apart. The deep breaths she pulls in through her nose probably look like nothing more than a stifled yawn to anyone else and she allows herself a smug moment of satisfaction, a few seconds to revel in how languid and sexy she feels. She glances over at Richard, expecting to see a similar look on his face, but to her surprise, he’s looking at her with such open affection that it makes her almost feel naked.
The retreat of his fingers gives her one last frisson of bliss, one that contrasts sharply to the fluttery feeling in her chest, a feeling that only intensifies when he drags his fingers along her thigh and takes her hand in his.
This, of all things, is what makes her suck in her breath, so sharply that a few press members glance curiously over at her, even though Jason’s holding forth on whatever fresh bit of nonsense he’s currently fixated on. Now Richard’s the one who looks smug. She inhales deeply once more, trying to get her unruly pulse under control. It makes no sense at all. Somehow this – the feel of his fingers laced through hers, his thumb sweeping gently along the side of her index finger, back and forth – somehow it’s more intimate than it was to have his hand under her skirt. She couldn’t say how, but it is.
10.
“This is a terrible game,” Richard announces. He’s paging through the sheaf of print-outs she’d made earlier, wrinkling his nose as if he’s judging even the paper they’re printed on.
“It was all I could find!” she protests. “Shockingly, strip club stag nights are far more popular and well-documented than retro sleepover stag nights. We’ll probably just end up playing pranks on each other all night anyway.” Emilia could kill Lissa for saddling her with this last minute, oldest friend or not. Event planning is not her forte. She pulls open her nightstand and rummages for her cute pajamas, throwing them into an overnight bag. She’ll have to leave straight away after filming tomorrow. Richard’s managed to restrict himself to only a handful of grouchy comments about her abandoning him for the weekend as he lounges on her bed and watches her pack. “You’ll just have to manage,” she’d informed him. No need for him to know that she misses him already and isn’t sure how she’ll make it to Sunday without him.
“What is this MASH business?” Richard asks. “Do girls actually do this stuff?”
“That one’s pretty popular, actually.”
“Do you lie about in your knickers and have sexy pillow fights, too? I’ve always wondered.”
“Of course,” she says. “And then we make out.”
“Don’t tease me with such things, woman,” he groans, rolling onto his back, arms thrown above his head. “Actually,” he says thoughtfully, “wondering whether girls had sexy pillow fights and made out after was pretty much a staple of most of the bloke sleepovers I remember.” Then he pauses. “We totally had sexy pillow fights and made out after, by the way.
She snorts, although the idea of Richard kissing another man is not entirely without appeal. “You’re incorrigible,” she tells him.
“So you keep saying,” he grins, then picks up the print-outs and leafs through them again. “Ooh, let’s rank our favorite sex positions.”
“Oh, let’s do,” she agrees. “You first.”
“That’s easy. They’re all tied for first place.”
She pauses in front of her closet and looks over at him. “You’ve honestly no preference?”
He shrugs. “Depends on the woman, I suppose. The time, the place, what I had for lunch. But it’s all sex with a comely and willing young woman, what’s not to love? The position has nothing to do with the smell of her skin or the taste of her mouth.” His voice is lower now, the burr in it caressing the words and making them sound positively indecent. “It doesn’t change the way I feel it in every inch of my body when she whimpers at my touch. When she gives herself over to me completely, ready for me to do anything to her, knowing I’ll bring her only pleasure.”
Emilia fights the urge to fan herself with the hem of a skirt. This should be corny, not unbelievably hot. He knows precisely what effect he’s having on her too, judging by the incredibly smug grin that she can’t decide if she wants to wipe off his face or kiss.
“All right,” he says, once he’s done turning her knees to jelly. “Your turn.”
“Hmm?”
“Your turn to rank them. I’ll read the list.” He glances at the print-out sitting on the bed next to him. “Missionary.”
“How am I possibly supposed to rank missionary position? That’s like ranking water on a list of beverages.”
“Okay, what about doggy style?” She gives a shudder in response. “That bad?” he asks.
“I’ve endured a lot of simulated banging from the rear lately,” she reminds him. “That’s put me off the concept a bit. It just feels…I don’t know. Distant? A little demeaning. Like it’s for men who don’t actually like the women they’re fucking very much.”
“There’s that,” he allows. “‘Course that’s not the only way to do it.” He regards her from beneath lowered lashes, and if she thought the way he talked could be seductive, it was nothing compared to the way he’s looking at her.
“Oh?” she says, though she has to clear her throat to get it out. “What do you mean, precisely?” A knowing smile spreads across his face and he pushes himself up to sit on the edge of her bed, knees wide, hands braced on the mattress. He knows he’s hooked her, the bastard, and now he’ll reel her in.
“It’s really more of a demonstration than a discussion,” he says conversationally.
“By all means,” she says, her voice far more even than she’d expected. “Educate me. I’m your willing pupil. Show me how to do the sex.” He gives a sharp bark of laughter, one of those truly genuine laughs he does when she’s taken him by surprise.
“Well far be it from me to disappoint a lady,” he says. He takes his time standing, moving across the room towards her. It’s not unlike what she imagines a fawn would experience being tracked by a wolf. She can’t deny there’s a deep down instinct to bolt, an overabundance of nerves and feelings and energy that has her body fighting against itself. He reaches her and just stares down at her for a moment, so close that she practically has to look straight up to see his face. The hand in her hair is gentle, so soft she barely feels it.
“Turn,” he says. She obeys, her body skimming against his as she pivots her on her heel so that her back is to him. “Good girl,” he murmurs at her, and she trembles. Why does something that should make her feel like a child make her feel so much like a woman instead?
She stands there before him, quivering, for several long moments. When his hands finally slide around her hips and pull her back to him, she could moan in relief, but she bites her lip and stifles it. He takes both of her hands in his, leans slightly forward to brace them on the edge of the dresser in front of her. The motion presses her arse back into his hips and she feels his response, hears the sound he makes deep in his chest that she can feel at her back. The knowledge that he’s just as on edge as she is makes her feel even more undone.
“The key,” he rumbles in her ear, so close and low she can feel it vibrating in her bones, “is closeness. I can’t look in your eyes, so I’ve got to make up for that in other ways. Fortunately, there’s no shortage of options. There’s your neck, begging to be touched…” His hand sliding up her neck is electric. He palms her vertebrae, cradles the base of her skull in strong fingers. The other hand spreads across her belly, holding her against him. “And your ears, right there and ready to hear all manner of things.”
“W-what sort of things?”
“Sweet things, for instance. Or filthy things.” His mouth is right at her ear now, his breath warm and damp. “Or both at the same time. Like telling you all the things I plan to do to you, each place I mean to touch, every spot I want to taste. How I want to get my fingers and my tongue on every inch of you, in every nook and cranny until you’re begging me so prettily to fuck you-”
“Oh God.”
“…for instance.” He grins against her ear, not a breath of space between her back and his body, hard and hot against hers.
“Richard.”
“And there are plenty of places for hands to explore this way. My hands. Yours.” He lifts his hand off her stomach, covers her own with it. Moves both of their hands back to her stomach and slides them down, down under her skirt and into her pants. She wants to say his name but she can’t form words anymore, nothing on her body functions except her nerve endings. He moves her hand under his, drags her own fingers over her desperately sensitive flesh. Then he pulls their hands free and brings hers to his mouth. She watches his lips close around her index and middle fingers, dragging from knuckle to tip, and her whole body flares and melts, her knees wobbling enough to almost knock together. He makes a pleased sound, then wraps her arm back around his neck and leaves it there while his own hand journeys downward again to make her even crazier.
“If I were truly a cad, I would make you do all the work yourself,” he says. “Luckily for you, I don’t mind helping.”
How can he even think clearly enough to talk right now, she has no idea. His hips are moving against her, in time with the motion of his hand. She’s just about mindless, the sounds she’s making not even close to actual words, while he could probably recite a soliloquy without even breaking a sweat. So unfair.
“Does this feel distant, love?”
“No,” she gasps.
“Demeaning?”
“N-no.”
“Do you feel like I don’t like you very much?” he presses, and she can hear his smile in his voice.
“Jesus, Rich, just shut up and fuck me, I’m begging you.”
“Ah, begging prettily indeed.” The air feels startlingly cold on her back when he shifts away, readying himself with a condom that he’d somehow produced out of thin air. She should probably find it a little odd that he had one so readily on hand, but she’s too busy being grateful. Her skirt gathers at her waist and he flexes his hand over her arse, squeezes and strokes over her skin. Gives it the lightest of spanks, so light she wonders if she imagined it.
“Ready?” he asks.
“Please,” she begs.
And then – finally, finally – he’s inside her and it’s all she can do not to out-and-out scream. She braces herself with one arm, threads the fingers of her other hand through his hair – hair she’ll probably never be able to touch again without remembering this and going cross-eyed with arousal – arching back against him and urging him on. Not that he needed the urging.
“Ri-iiich, Richard,” she whines when she comes, almost hating the thin edge of her voice, the desperation in it. Almost, except for how it makes him groan in response, makes him snap his hips in a way that has her voice shivering up half an octave, a wordless sound of pleasure-pain. He’s humming against her neck now, the sound of it vibrating into her skin and across every nerve ending she has. The heat of his mouth sucks a dark rose on her skin. The make-up people will be mad tomorrow. Maybe in another hour she’ll care, but right now she doesn’t give a shit. Not when he’s making her feel like this.
When they finally fall into bed – far too late, she’s definitely going to have her pants put in the freezer for falling asleep first at the stag night slumber party – she can barely move. Her muscles seem to have liquefied. Completely worth a pair of frozen knickers, she thinks.
“Mils?” he says sleepily, just when she’s almost asleep herself.
“Hmm?”
“Next time I get to be the one who pretends not to know how to do the sex, ‘kay? You get to teach me.” Even almost asleep, she can’t help laughing.
“Don’t laugh,” he murmurs, his voice soft and fuzzy. “I’m completely serious.” It only makes her laugh more.
11.
He’s got some of the loveliest coats. Other men she’s been with have worn windcheaters or sweatshirts, or rough, utilitarian jackets. Richard likes to wear proper coats – gorgeous wool pea coats, things with buttons instead of zippers. They make him look like a page of the Marks and Spencer catalogue come to life.
She can never seem to resist the urge to touch those coats either, to slide her hand along the fabric, back and forth, like they’re soft animals to be caressed. The first time she’d caught herself doing it, she’d snatched her hand away as if from a fire, sheepishly avoiding Richard’s gaze. Now she doesn’t even think about it. As with many other things about Richard, she’s stopped trying to be dignified where his coats are concerned.
“You know, it’s a good thing I’m secure in my appeal,” he tells her. They’re walking back from dinner along the river, the night cold and dry. She’s been absently sliding her hand from the inside of his elbow up to his armpit and back down again for the last five blocks at least. It’s her favorite of his coats. She wonders if he knows it, given how often he wears it when they’re out. A fanciful, girlish notion, to say the least, but he makes those easy to indulge.
“Why’s that?” she asks.
“Because otherwise I might think you were only interested in me for my coats.” He grins down at her, so much taller than she is, especially when she’s wearing flats.
“Don’t be silly,” she says. “I like you at least as much as I like your coats.”
“Minx,” he laughs. He has his hands in his pockets. It’s always so easy to take his arm, so casual and natural. With other men it feels affected. With Richard it fits.
“Never wear any coat other than this one,” she says, impulsively. The look he gives her confirms without a doubt that he’s noticed it’s her favorite.
“As you wish, khaleesi,” he purrs. It sends a spark racing up her spine. The cold night suddenly doesn’t seem so cold anymore.
12.
The sound of his key in the lock is overly loud in the quiet apartment. Emilia swipes at her face, tries to control her hitching breath. She should have waited to read those chapters when she knew he wouldn’t be back for a while. She knew this was coming, she could tell. Ugh, if she saw George right now she would punch him in the ear.
“Kit sends his love,” Richard says, dropping his keys on the table and shrugging off his coat. “And he said to thank you again for the advice on filming those scenes. Apparently you were much more helpful than I was. Shocking, since I- Mils? Mils, what’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
“Y- y-…” she stammers, but she can’t seem to make her voice work. Somehow seeing him standing there makes her feel worse instead of better.
“Mils, easy now, tell me what’s wrong.” He settles in front of her on the sofa, wraps a reassuring arm around the knees that she still has curled up against her chest as if to protect herself, pushes one hand into her hair and searches her eyes.
“You’re dead!” she wails, pointing to the copy of A Storm of Swords lying on the floor across the room. Richard frowns at it.
“What’s it doing over there?” he asks.
“I threw it,” she sniffles. “I was upset!” Then she rounds on him angrily. “You knew this was coming and you didn’t warn me! You’ve known for at least a week! I hate you. I hate everything.” She bursts into noisy tears again and buries her face against her knees. She knows this is a complete overreaction, but she can’t help it. What an awful, awful book.
“Oh Mils,” he laughs.
“Stop laughing,” she says against her knees. “It was terrible. It was so awful.”
Still laughing, he snakes his arms under her and she finds herself hauled onto his lap, curled haphazardly against his chest. She wraps her arms around his neck so tightly, it’s amazing he can breathe. But his arms are tight around her too, so tight it almost hurts, and they feel better than anything.
“You died,” she sobs against his neck. “They killed you.”
“Sweetheart, I’m all right,” he says. “I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.” Then he laughs again when her sobbing only doubles. “Why does that make you cry harder?”
“It just does,” she chokes out. This is ridiculous. She’s got to get a hold of herself. It takes a few minutes for her to stop crying, to gather her unruly emotions into some semblance of control. Her face has got to be puffy and tear-streaked and horrible when she pulls a bit away and gives him a watery smile, but he doesn’t seem to notice or care.
“Better?”
She nods. And because he’s Rich and he always seems to know exactly what she needs, he kisses her then, gently, sweetly – so sweetly it almost makes her cry again. It’s like a switch, and all the emotion she was putting into crying goes into kissing him now, into pouring every bit of how she feels into the touch of her lips, telling him the only way she knows how just what he means to her.
“So are you going to be like this over everything?” he asks, leaning back against the cushions and cuddling her under his chin, his arms a protective cage around her. “I’d quite enjoy some jealousy over Jeyne Westerling.”
“Hardly,” she scoffs, but she can’t deny the idea had occurred to her. It’s only fair, really. He’s put up with Drogo, she’ll have to put up with Jeyne.
“Not even a little jealousy?” he asks, disappointed. She pulls back to look at him, at the ridiculous pout and puppy-dog eyes he’s giving her.
“Nope,” she lies. “Not a drop. Have fun trying to make babies!”
He laughs and tightens his arms around her. Skates the tip of his nose up her cheek to nuzzle in her hair. “Look who’s incorrigible now,” he says.
13.
There’s an email from him waiting for her the second she turns on her phone after landing. The entire flight, she’d told herself that they could use the time apart, that she didn’t want to be smothered and needed some time and space to herself. That she wouldn’t think about him at all, that maybe she wouldn’t even read any mails or texts from him, and that three days would seem like nothing, a blink of an eye.
“You haven’t even taken your seatbelt off and already you’re desperate to hear from him,” she sighs to herself when she clicks on his email immediately.
“Your cab just left and I miss you already,” it starts, and she reads it three times, smiling secretly to herself and wondering how anyone could be so emotionally honest, so completely unguarded with him feelings. “I want to mail some casting suggestions for Ygritte to Kit and I need some suggestions. I’m thinking something along the lines of George, but a woman. With the beard. Thoughts?”
She lasts half an hour in her hotel room – unpacking her bag, hanging up her clothes, investigating the free soap – before she can’t stand another second without answering him.
“Try this,” she suggests, attaching a truly horrible photo she found online, one that looks like a photoshop mash-up of George, a drag queen, and an African rhino.
“Brilliant,” comes his response, not five seconds later. “You are perfect, no wonder I love you.” She sucks in her breath and drops her phone like it’s a glowing coal.
She spends the rest of the day trying not to think about it. It’s a busy day, full of photocalls and interviews and fittings, it shouldn’t be so difficult. But she can’t seem to keep away from it. She returns to it over and over again, poking at it like a bruise or a loose tooth. She’s never been especially good at love. Having him use the word should terrify her. Shouldn’t it?
It’s late when she gets a text from him. She’s already in bed, sleepless, staring at the ceiling. She hesitates to open it for a while. She’s waited so long after his email, he’s bound to be bothered. Upset. Maybe angry. Maybe she’s ruined everything by doing nothing. She takes a deep breath and opens the message.
“When are you coming home?” the text says, and she’d never thought a text message could sound so plaintive. Our home, she thinks. His and mine. The thought doesn’t frighten her the way she thought it might.
“Soon,” she answers. “I’m coming home soon.” She hesitates, takes a deep breath, before typing, “I miss you” and hitting send before she can analyze it to death. It’s as close as she’ll let herself get to responding to his email in kind. Whether she hopes he understands that, or hopes he doesn’t, she’s not sure. His reply comes instantly, like he was holding his phone, waiting for her to text. Maybe he was. That doesn’t frighten her the way she thought it might either.
“Miss you too, Mils,” she reads. She falls asleep with the phone still in her hand, his message glowing in the dark as her eyes slip closed.
14.
She’d expected him to be waiting for her in some capacity, maybe even to greet her at the door. Knowing Rich, he’d find some ridiculous way to do it, a costume of some sort, a rose between his teeth as he leaned against the door jamb. Casual, easy, fun. How he does everything.
What she hadn’t expected was to see him loitering on the steps of the building when her cab pulled up, smoking a cigarette and looking like everything she never knew she’d always wanted. She watches, somehow nervous, as he takes a last drag and tosses the cigarette to the ground, reaching the kerb in three long strides. The cab hasn’t even come to a complete stop before he’s got a hold of the door handle, and she’s hauled up and out of the door and into his arms before she can blink.
“I haven’t even paid yet,” she says, dazed, when he finally relinquishes her mouth. Richard leans past her, wordlessly gives the driver some bill – an entirely too large bill, from the looks of it – and tells him to keep the change. He grabs her carry-on from the seat and deposits it on the sidewalk while elbowing the car door shut, his other arm still wrapped around her waist – holding her up a bit, if she’s honest, as her knees went to water the second his hand touched her. Then he’s kissing her again, and it’s like drowning, like dying. Like coming home.
15.
He washed the sheets for her, she can tell, the soft cotton ones he knows she likes best. They smell fresh and clean, brushing softly on her legs as she slides a contented knee over Richard’s. God, she’d missed this. She’d missed him. Three bloody days and it felt like three hundred.
“Happy?” he asks, his voice drowsy and contented and not a little proud of himself, the wretched man. He should feel proud, though, considering the way he’d just made her feel. Not that she’d tell him and give him the satisfaction.
“Stop fishing for compliments,” she yawns, snuggling closer to his side. He’s so warm. She runs her hand over his chest, slots her fingers into the shallow grooves between his ribs, frowning when he seems skinnier than normal. She’ll have to feed him up.
“You wound me, khaleesi,” he says. “I wish for nothing more than your happiness, and here you accuse me of being prideful.” The words are a joke, but she can sense the sincerity behind him, the genuine desire to make her happy. It’s almost too much for her to take.
“You’ve been filming too much,” she says, burying her face against his side. The temptation to taste his skin is irresistible, and she gives in, biting the too-lean flesh over his ribs with gentle teeth. “My lord,” she adds, impishly. He gasps, catching her chin in his hand, tilting her face up to his.
“My khaleesi has sharp teeth,” he says. “My sweet Victorian lady. My Emilia.” And oh, the softness in his face could kill her and she’d be happy to die. She groans, pressing her nose into the hollow between his ear and the pillow, knowing he’ll hear what she can’t help saying.
“I cannot stand myself, you’ve turned me into Sophie losing her mind over Justin Bieber,” she grumps. His crow of laughter is delighted and immediate.
“Oh ho, what was that? What was that you said? I didn’t quite hear you.” He wraps her up in his arms, rolls them across the bed in a tangle of sheets until she’s dizzy and breathless. He props himself up on his elbows over her, smiles down at her like she made the sun with her own two hands, just for him.
“I’m your Bieber,” he laughs, punctuating the words with the sweetest of kisses, all over her face, rubbing his beard into her neck and making her squeal. “I am never letting you live that down.”
Later, when he’s almost asleep, she burrows close to him. “Yes,” she whispers, lips brushing the shell of his ear. “Yes, I’m happy.” He doesn’t answer, or even open his eyes. But his arm around her tightens, and there’s a ghost of a smile on his face. He heard her. She knows he did.