Chapter Text
✶ — LESSONS IN ANATOMY !
summary: lyonel doesn't understand why his new wife spends all her time in the library until he catches you studying a book about sex and decides to help teach you a lesson or two (4k)
characters: lyonel baratheon / fem!reader, ser duncan my beloved
contents: enemies to lovers, arranged marriage, introvert!reader, grumpy!reader, brief mentions of bisexual!reader, also brief mentions of bisexual!lyonel (he kinda asks duncan for a threesome in this because ofc he would), not proofread cw for mentions of sex in the anatomical sense and smut 18+ (MDNI): virginity loss, switch!reader, lowkey sub!lyonel, unprotected sex, riding him in a library bc yum
( NAVIGATION ) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( AO3 )
Lyonel Baratheon had lived a long life of getting everything he ever wanted and, by all accounts, you were no exception.
He announced his betrothal to you — the only daughter of a wealthy lord in a long line of sons — like a game trophy after a hunting trip, waving an already dead thing in the air and expecting everyone else to clap. You were the dead thing in question, as distant and lifeless as a deer head mounted on the wall, while his house and yours rejoiced at the newfound alliance.
And Lyonel did what he always did: he got what he wanted. He got you. But not in any real way, though, not in any way that truly mattered — and the notion itself consumes his every waking thought. Because what right does the heir of Storm’s End have to spend his wedding night chasing after a princess with no real prospects like a stray puppy instead of the high lord he is?
It must be a cruel joke from the Gods, no doubt — to give the most sought-after bachelor in the Seven Kingdoms a woman who’d sooner be a maester than a bride.
“I would hope I have not proven so dull that you would rather seek solace in your books than in the company of your own lord husband,” Lyonel slurs as he stumbles into the expansive library, filling the serene quiet with his strong voice and even stronger scent of ale.
You tense on instinct at the suddenness of his presence, forcing yourself to swallow down the immediate annoyance that swells in your throat as you turn to flash the staggering man an artificial smile over your shoulder.
“What brings you here, Ser Lyonel?” you ask politely. “Don’t you have guests to entertain?”
“Aye. I do,” Lyonel nods, greying curls wild and clinging to his sweat-slick forehead. “And these guests are growing quite curious about your disappearance, wife.”
“Well, I think most of them are aware that I have very little taste for weddings and all their— revels,” you mumble and turn away again, propping your head on your fist and shifting uncomfortably in your seat.
Your ornate wedding dress, embellished in colors of both his house and yours, drapes heavily over your form while your corset strangles your ribcage. The combination of both is borderline suffocating; a slow death you long for now.
“Oh, trust me, I heard,” Lyonel scoffs. His boots scuff the cobbles as he stumbles the short distance towards you, golden cloak trailing behind him. “Neither is dancing, apparently. Or feasting, or laughing, or— anything that requires any bit of fun…”
You refuse to argue with him now. You just roll your eyes and turn the page, punctuating your annoyance with the quiet swishing sound of the heavy parchment.
You flinch when he leans suddenly over you, warmer than a fireplace, and replacing the sweet scent of your floral aromatics with the heavier scent of leather and whiskey. His strong arm reaches over your shoulder while his ringed pointer finger scans the page before you.
“Except for… bloodletting,” he reads, tapping the word with the pad of his finger. “Riveting stuff, I’m sure.”
You glare daggers at the man as he rounds the small table. “I happen to find studying quite riveting, Ser Lyonel. In a just world, I would’ve been a maester, not a bride.”
“Then why not become a septa?” he wonders with a lazy shrug, fanning out his golden cloak before dropping into the cushioned seat across from you. He throws his long legs over the table with two heavy thumps, crossing one boot over the other on top of your scrolls and opened books. “Or a fucking— silent sister?”
“Because I don’t care about devoting my life to worshipping the fucking Seven,” you answer with a scoff, missing the amused smile Lyonel gives you at your suddenly foul language when you turn back to the book before you. “I want to heal the sick. I want to travel the world. I want to take care of people—”
“Starting with your lord husband, perhaps?” Lyonel quips with a lopsided grin, raising his brows behind his wild curls as he reaches across the table with a ringed hand to slide the book away from you.
You meet his smug grin with a hardened stare.
“Perhaps not,” you answer in a monotone. Your eyes narrow into slits as you curl your fingers around the edge of the leather-bound book to drag it back across the table again. “The Master of Whispers tells me you’re quite popular at the brothels you frequent, Ser Lyonel. I believe he said you were ‘a drunken, lust-filled beast.’”
Lyonel’s grin blossoms behind his greying beard at the compliment. “Most women would hope for such a trait in a husband, wouldn’t they?”
You glare at him from beneath your lashes. His smile ebbs in an instant.
He clicks his lips against his teeth, bounces his brows, and reaches for a scroll idling at his side. He twists the thing between his fingers, if only to have something to do with his hands.
“So… I presume the bedding ceremony is off the table, then?” he wonders aloud, half-sheepish.
Your mouth flickers in the faintest hint of a smile — more cynical than anything, but still the first time he’s seen you the least bit pleased. “Despite what the whispers say, you are quite perceptive, Ser Lyonel.”
He nods with a mournful sigh and forces out a smile he hardly means.
“And now my watch begins…” the man mumbles the sacred oath of celibacy from the soldiers up north, tipping his wild head back and shutting his heavy eyes.
Your eyes trace over the soft edges of his profile in the interim. He’s like a statue carved from delicate clay, far more beautiful than you give him credit for, perhaps — but prettiest when he’s quiet.
Your father holds a two-week-long tourney to celebrate your wedding — you can’t think of a more poetic way to spend your honeymoon than the blood and carnage of daily jousts.
You wake on the fifth day, like all the rest, in your study. The scent of leather and old books hangs in the warming air as the golden sun rises over the trees, turning the swirls of dust into sparkling rays of light. It is not the gentle touch of your handmaiden that wakes you this time, but rather a foreign one — a large, calloused, strangely warm palm that spreads gently over the length of your shoulder blade.
Your heavy eyes flutter slowly open. You recognize, first, the dull ache in the base of your neck from where you’d spent the night slumped over the desk. It isn’t until the haze of sleep has cleared that you spot the tall stranger crouched softly at your side. A gasped breath gets caught in your throat at the sight of him there.
“Who are you?” you wonder aloud in a voice gruff with sleep, with your cheek still smushed against the opened book you use as a makeshift pillow.
“Apologies, princess— Uh, my lady,” the man with the chopped strawberry-blonde hair and bright blue eyes stammers. He’s much too tall and much too burly to cower before you the way he does now. “I’m Dunk— Ser Duncan.”
A quiet groan rumbles deep in your throat as you sit up straight again, stretching the ache in your spine and peeling the heavy page from your cheek.
“I don’t mean to… intrude,” he apologizes, wide eyes darting between your sleep-worn face and the heavy book before you. “But it— It’s your husband, my land. Ser Lyonel, he’s… He’s grown quite drunk. And your father— He sent me so that maybe you could—”
“Seven fucking Hells.”
Duncan flinches at the suddenly brash language from such a quiet, delicate-looking girl. He thought Lyonel was just being drunk and dramatic when he said you’d sooner take the Night’s Watch oath than recite wedding vows; you’re hardly fit for a bride, much less a princess.
Your chair scrapes hard against the cobbles as you rise from your seat, still in your dress from the night before and your sleep-wild hair as you storm out of the library. Duncan follows close behind, stuck in the smoke the fire in your strides leaves behind.
“My father was right— the big oaf,” you mumble cynically to yourself as you bound down the set of spiral stairs, clutching your skirt in your fists. “I would’ve been better off becoming a fucking septa, considering I’m going to be spending the rest of my life chasing after my husband like he’s a child.”
Duncan trails behind you like a lost puppy. He’s not exactly sure how to respond, only that Lyonel once told him that, when a highborn says something, you agree.
“Aye, my lady,” the tall man nods and clears his throat. He flinches at the morning sun that hits him in the face when you throw the heavy door open, catching it before it can shut behind you. “He can be— quite the handful—”
Your rushed strides down the dewy grass never slow as you throw the stranger a curious look over your shoulder. Expansive tents of a hundred different colors pass by on either side of you.
“You’re the one who’s been looking after him, then?” you ask, then follow quickly when he gives you a puppy-like look of confusion in response. “The one who’s been making sure he’s not drinking himself to death, I mean?”
“Oh. Aye, my lady,” Duncan nods rapidly. “We met at a tourney a few months back. We’ve become quite good friends… I suppose.”
You bounce your brows and turn away. “When my brother said a long-legged lowborn with a pretty face was following my husband like an obedient hound, I assume he was talking about a whore—”
Your garish language stops the man in his tracks as you duck into the Baratheon tent, donned a vivid golden color, and already swelling with chaos and the overwhelming scent of steak and ale despite the early morning.
Sunlight peeks through in a golden-white sliver to announce your arrival. You can’t help but cower when the heads inside snap suddenly towards you, and then to the tall knight that enters just behind. The applause from surrounding patrons slows to a stop. Lyonel does, too, from where he stands on top of the center table — shirtless and shining with sweat — with one hand holding a cup of ale and the other hanging onto the dim chandelier above his head.
His scruffy chest heaves with panted breaths as if he’d just been dancing, or singing, or both; and you assume the applause must’ve been for him. You’ve quickly come to learn that the applause is always for him.
Lyonel meets your scowling face with a wide grin, as lopsided as the antlered crown sitting crooked on his wild head. “Ah! There she is! My blushing bride!”
Your frown deepens as you watch him stagger off the table, using nearby hands to brace himself as he hobbles off the chairs. The droning of a thousand conversations fills the crowded tent a second later, along with the strolling minstrels playing in the center of the dance floor.
“It’s hardly break of day— How are you already drunk?” you ask him in a monotone.
“I fear I’ve not yet shaken the wine from last night, my lady,” Lyonel confesses with a smile.
“And the night before that?” you wonder rhetorically, squinting at the staggering man as he towers just ahead of you.
“And the night before that,” he concurs with a slow nod and a laugh he can hardly contain. “See? We know each other so well already, don’t we, wife?”
He knocks the wind out of you when he wraps you in a sudden embrace, careful not to spill his ale while knocking you back a few steps. He wraps a strong arm around your shoulder and presses you into his bare chest, reeking of sweat, sweet wine, and spiced oils.
Your stomach does a backflip for a reason you can’t name — the feeling is much too warm to be excitement, and far too sparkling to be disgust. You struggle to place it as he sways you in place, vaguely in time with the violin across the tent. You keep your hands balled into fists at your sides all the while.
“Can I tell you something, wife?”
The term spills from his mouth like he’s still getting used to it, like it still tastes a bit sour on his tongue.
He continues when you say nothing, jutting back his bearded chin to peer down at you with glassy hazel eyes.
“I heed not what the whispers say,” he confesses in a whisper, and you try not to flinch when his warm, whiskey-coated breath fans over your cheek.
“The court may prattle on that you are too homely— or that your affections are much better suited for women than men— or that you’d rather marry your dusty old books than any living soul… Yet here I stand… Trying hopelessly to catch your attention,” he murmurs, softened eyes darting back and forth between both of yours. “A strange fool I must be, hm?”
Lyonel looks at you then like it’s your turn to speak, though you’re not quite sure what an adequate response would be — or why, exactly, his words make the warm feeling inside you bloom.
“…Thank you?” you say, with an upward inflection and a confused glimmer in your gaze.
Lyonel goes to speak, but his attention catches something past your shoulder.
“Hedge Knight!” he greets with a newfound grin, cradling you to his bare chest as he urges you to face the man standing just behind you. You’re half-smothered in his pale shoulder while he talks into his cup of ale, right before he takes a lengthy sip. “When the hell did you get here, you fool?”
“Me?” Duncan asks, blue eyes darting wildly between the two of you. “I’ve— I’ve been here the whole time, my lord. You saw me just a few moments ago—”
“Ah, get in here, you big bastard,” Lyonel laughs with ale sparkling on his mouth and mustache, motioning wildly with his half-gone cup. “There’s room in here for one more.”
Duncan exhales an awkward laugh, smiling with his crooked teeth.
Lyonel’s smile fades in an instant. “I’m not kidding.”
Duncan’s face floods with a wordless look of shock.
“Yes, he is,” you grumble like a storm cloud, shoving the man off of you and letting your palms linger against his scruffy chest a moment longer than you needed to.
You stalk off again with a swirled look on your face, as if you’ve just tasted something sour. You’re only able to catch your breath again when you’re back outside, apart from the stench of sweat and ale, and away from Lyonel’s all-consuming touch.
You shut yourself away with your books, just like you always do, and let the written words swallow you whole. You abandon your studies on healing and medicine, and instead drag a dusty, leatherbound book from the depths of your shelves — A Compendium of the Varied Marital Postures of Procreative Union by Maester Vaellyn, from roughly a century or more ago.
The illustrations of sexual acts, and the descriptions of such sinfulness, stir within you the same warmth you’d had when you saw Lyonel in the tent that morning — in his stupid antlered helm, with that stupid look on his stupid face, and that stupid confession that took your breath away for a reason you still can’t name.
You settle into your reading nook with a foreign ache in your stomach — lounging on the cushions beside the large window overlooking the candlelit tents and glittering black waters outside — and delve into your book to relieve the aching.
“It is observed by certain learned men, that a wife’s fullest ecstasy is more readily attained when due regard is given to her most delicate seat of sensation—”
Your heart lurches into your throat when the heavy wooden entrance creaks open and shut again. You flare red-hot when Lyonel saunters in, already embarrassed for something you haven’t yet been caught doing. You slam the heavy book shut and squeeze your thighs together to soothe the dull pounding between them.
“I have been trying to amuse you— as my wife and all,” Lyonel starts through panted breaths, chest heaving beneath his golden, quilted gambeson as he leans against the door. He tilts his bearded chin down and peers at you with wild hazel eyes as he spits, “But my patience with this, dear wife, has begun to grow quite thin.”
“My sincerest apologies for wounding your pride, dear husband,” you spit back. “But I’m quite busy in here.”
“Oh, I’m sure of it,” Lyonel says with an emotionless laugh as he closes the distance between you on long legs. “But I’ve been dealing with those cunts on my own all day—”
“That’s my family you’re speaking of.”
“—I have supped and I have smiled amongst the big oafs all morning, and they have near driven me to madness for it,” he continues, half-crazed, as he looms over you. With a sarcastic, sickly sweet smile, he hisses, “So, if it pleases the lady, come do your duty as my wife, and put me out of my misery—”
You go to make a joke, one about putting him down like a sick dog, but he’s jerking your book from your hands before you can.
“Lyonel!” you shout.
“What is it this time that’s been keeping you all day, hm?” he calls over his shoulder as he stalks off in the opposite direction. “Is it the herbs again? Oh, no, it’s the one about leeches, isn’t it? Or better yet, maggots—”
“Give it back!” you scold, scrambling from your nook to follow after him.
“Let’s give it a read, shall we?” he hums with a wide grin and rushes onto a nearby chair when you hurry suddenly towards him. He’s bounding up the table before you can reach him, and flicking through the thick parchment with his thumb. “How about… here.”
He clears his throat and starts to recite, while you stand underneath him and wait for the ground to swallow you whole.
“Let not a husband hasten to apply immediate stimulation to the wife’s clitoris—” Lyonel reads in a whimsical tone of voice, then cuts himself off with a pleased look on his face. “Oh, so it’s that kind of book, is it?”
“Give it back,” you spit.
“I’m not quite done,” he lilts and returns to the page. “—The initial attentions should be directed towards the breasts, whose manipulation increases warmth and quickens the pulse— blah, blah, blah— Only once general arousal has been well-established should focus be given to the petals of her womanhood, with soft kisses and patient devotion…”
Lyonel trails off with a crooked grin, shutting the heavy book with a loud clap that fills the suffocating silence of the study. You meet his smile with a hardened glower and fists that tremble at your sides, burning red-hot beneath your dress from embarrassment and rage alike.
“I know I have grown quite fond of teasing you, princess, but this…?” he clicks his tongue against his teeth. “This is truly invigorating, my lady.”
“Don’t patronize me,” you hiss through gritted teeth.
“I assure you, I am being uncharacteristically sincere at this moment,” Lyonel says as he climbs off the table again. The scent of leather and wine stained perpetually on his skin snatches the breath from your lungs for the second time when he towers over you again. “I, for one, am elated that you’re not focusing on your studies for a change. Though if you wanted a lesson on… release, you could’ve just come to me— I am your husband after all—”
“I don’t need a lesson,” you argue.
He arches a heavy brow. “Is that so?”
Your eyes widen at the amused look he gives you, and you stumble hopelessly over yourself to get the words out. “I— I only mean that—”
Lyonel grins, eager to hear your excuse.
You frown.
“I don’t have to explain myself to you,” you retort like a stubborn child, snatching your book from his grasp and clutching the leather to your chest.
Lyonel holds his gently calloused palms out in surrender.
“No, my lady, you don’t… But I fear you’d be lying to both of us if you said you weren’t at least a little aroused right now…” His smug smile returns as he scrunches the bridge of his nose. “Makes two of us.”
“Is sex all you think about?”
“Asks the girl reading a book on sex… Funny how that works, right?”
“I truly didn’t think I could regret marrying you more than I did on our wedding day,” you deadpan. “But, alas, you are finding new ways to annoy me.”
Lyonel laughs and turns on his heel to walk away. Only when his attention is off of you can you take a full breath in.
“Fine. I’ll leave. Even though we both know you don’t want me to,” the man argues as he ambles slowly back to the entrance. He pauses at the door, throwing you a mischievous look over his shoulder. “Though, to tell you the truth, I am not above consummating our marriage in this study, dear wife—”
“I thought you were leaving,” you say in a monotone.
“I’m going,” he assures, but takes his time twisting the knob and swinging open the door, just waiting for you to give in to what he knows you want.
You inhale slowly through your nose and swallow through the lump in your throat. “Where is your helm, Ser Lyonel?” you hear yourself ask him before he’s gone again.
His wild head snaps over his shoulder. His brows lower in a confused look because, by all accounts, he was not expecting your following words after such a carnal conversation to be about his goddamn ancestral headdress.
“W-What?”
“Your antlered crown,” you answer firmly. “Where is it?”
“At the… The feasting table,” he shrugs. “Why?”
“Retrieve it,” you tell him, and leave very little room for argument. “And return to me here. And then you can tell all your highborn friends that you’re the first lord to have his bedding ceremony in a study—”
Lyonel’s gone before you can properly get the words out, hurrying back to the throne room to retrieve his crown, and not asking another question as to why you want it so desperately.
You make a pliant, obedient boy out of the man they call The Laughing Storm, as you ride him in the reading nook — with his trousers unbuckled and his freckled shoulders pressing hard against the cool glass behind him. The antlered helm sitting crooked on his curls taps gently against the window with each pass of your hips over his lap, down his thighs and back up again.
You’re still getting used to the feeling of him inside you. The sharp stinging has since faded into a dull ache somewhere in the depths of your stomach, which is drowned out by a far more overwhelming pleasure stirring warmly somewhere much deeper.
“Go down a little,” you command, digging crescent shapes onto his pale skin as you brace yourself on his shoulders.
Lyonel’s glassy hazel eyes flit between your face and where his hand disappears under your bunched-up slip, struggling to maneuver his thumb exactly the way you want him to. The pad of his finger finds a pearl-like button there; he presses hard onto the delicate thing and awaits your reaction.
“There?” he wonders aloud, almost sheepishly so, then grins wide when you tip your head back with a parted mouth. Your soft moan fills the quiet study a second later, along with Lyonel’s breathless laughter. “Yeah… There you go…”
“Now… Put your mouth here—”
You grab a fistful of his curls and urge him towards your breasts, which stand at attention and wait to be kissed, like the book from before — left abandoned somewhere on the desk — said they might be.
“Full of commands tonight, aren’t we, my lady?” Lyonel quips, but leans forward to flick his tongue over your pebbled nipple anyway.
You twitch on top of him when his teeth scrape over the delicate skin there, which makes your hips buck harder into his hand, which makes his thumb press harder to your clit. Your fingers tighten in his hair and on his shoulder, keeping him pressed impossibly close against you.
“It’s coming,” you whimper in warning, when you feel a strange knot tightening in the very pit of your stomach.
“Wait for me,” Lyonel pleads through panted breaths, half-muffled against you, because he longs to feel you fluttering around him when he finally cums inside you.
“No,” you answer stubbornly.
“Alright then…”
He turns his head to pay attention to your unkissed breast and groans against you when he hears you whine. He presses harder to your clit to add to your pleasure there. You still suddenly on top of him a second later, pussy clenching as it gushes suddenly around his cock.
“Oh, fuck…” you whimper, half-frightened, when the high suddenly hits you.
Your features screw in a pained sort of look as the warm waves of an orgasm wash over you. You’re only able to take another breath in when it ebbs a few seconds later. Your eyes widen in a look of not-so-subtle shock down at Lyonel when he pulls off of your breast with a quick smack — eyes heavy and mouth swollen as he smirks up at you.
“Oh, fuck,” you repeat through panted breaths. “How are people not doing this all the time?”
“I presume some people do, my lady,” he laughs.
“…Can we?” you ask.
He grins wider at your naivety, which he didn’t think was possible for such a smart thing like you.
“Well, I don’t know about all the time, princess,” he pants with a lust-drunk smile. “But I do know we have the rest of the night.”