Stolen - Chapter 3: Exploration
Dec. 14th, 2012 10:15 pm
SUMMARY OF THIS CHAPTER:
He pressed a few feather-light kisses there, then moved to the hollow place under her throat and continued there with equally soft touches with his lips
Sandor
Sandor sat brooding on a chair and studied the sleeping form of the girl. She was breathing steadily, her lashes fluttering every now and then as her eyes moved under her lids.
Bloody buggering hells! What kind of a mess have I gotten myself into!
He had deliberately tried to find the girl alone. He had had a hunch that such a fine lady would not run away to the city – no, she still had to be in the tower. And he had been right.
He hadn’t had any precise plan, only a vague notion of wanting to catch and keep the little bird for himself for just a while, just so he could satisfy his curiosity of how such a fine young thing could exist. He had always seen her in the company, from afar and when her attention had been turned to others. The only time he had been alone with her had been at the Hand’s Tourney, when he for some unfathomable reason had told her the story of his scars. The most incomprehensible thing of all had been her reaction; how she had touched his arm with an expression of sincere concern in her face.
Then things had gone horribly wrong as she had fallen. Initially Sandor had thought her dead and felt a cold dread in his stomach when kneeling beside her on the floor. He hated failure and the King’s instructions – parroted from Cersei’s – had been clear; find her alive and bring her to the Maegor’s Holdfast unharmed. He wasn’t sure why, as surely her engagement to Joffrey would be broken after her father was declared a traitor. However, it was not his position to question his orders, just to obey them.
When he had noticed she was still breathing, he had done the first thing that came to his mind and taken her into his room. He had ripped the tattered and sooty dress away and examined her to see if she had broken any bones. In the process he couldn’t help comparing his own rough hands, covered with a fine criss-cross of countless scars and cuts, to her supple and smooth limbs. He had dabbed the bloody bruises and scratches clean lest they fester, and again been astonished of the softness of her skin.
After the first few days Sandor found he simply didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t return her to the King after such time – there would be questions where she had been. He might have claimed to have found her in the city, but if questioned, she would surely reveal the truth even without intending to. She was bound to be a bad liar, such a fine lady as she was.
And so he found himself stuck with her. And more surprisingly, found that he didn’t mind. Sandor started to look forward returning to his room in the evening. Before it had been only an empty shell, needed only for whiling the evening away drinking, sleeping, and occasionally, tumbling with a whore. Never for a whole night though, he always kicked them out of his room as soon as possible.
After the little bird had moved in, when he entered his room in the evening, there was someone waiting for him. As the girl had gotten better, he noticed she had started to make some subtle, hardly noticeable chances. The meagre cutlery he had was arranged neatly on the table to wait for the meal he brought, and the clothes that used to lay on the floor or hang from the wall rack had been folded away on top of the chest. She had even found some scraps of cloth he had intended to use for polishing his leather gear and used them as a table cloth. Table cloth – for the Hound!
Most of all, she was there. Still shy, but getting more and more relaxed, fussing about the food he carried in, offering him a goblet of wine when he sat down. She had haltingly started to tell him about the life in Winterfell, partially in response to his snorted comment about high lords and how one was not different from another. She had become almost agitated about it and started to defend his father and explain how he was different. How his smallfolk not only respected but loved him, how he always made sure that the castle folk had enough food and firewood. Sandor had listened, cynical at first but after glimpsing a life so different to what he had led so far, with more curiosity. He even asked questions, enjoying seeing her spirited responses to them. Indeed, their evenings were starting to be... almost too domestic.
After Sandor had told Sansa about his plan to send her to the North, she had brightened up noticeably. Sometimes he heard her humming to herself as she was setting the table or sewing.
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One evening when she was working on her new dress to make it fit better, she wore Sandor’s tunic and he found he simply couldn’t turn his gaze away from her. Long auburn hair curling on her shoulders against the coarse fabric, sleeves rolled into thick bundles to keep them falling down over her hands, her small feet peeking under the hem as she sat curled on the bed. He had never seen a woman looking like she did then. Women he usually saw were either servants with coarse dresses and rough feet, whores dressed-up in too tight dresses of garish colours or noble ladies in their silks and satins. His little bird looked like none of them – and he couldn’t stop staring.
Sansa seemed to sense his gaze and raised her head to look at him. Without thinking he beckoned her to come closer. “Come here, girl.”
She rose obediently, put her sewing aside and approached his chair, stopping a few paces in front of him.
“Closer,” he growled. As long as she was still in his power he might as well explore the exotic little bird a bit better, before she flew away. Sandor still remembered his examination of her after the fall, but then he had had a task to perform and hadn’t been able to fully appreciate the rare opportunity to see something so fine so close.
Sansa stepped towards him hesitantly, standing so near that he only needed to extend his arms to capture her by the waist and pull her to his lap. She gasped but didn’t struggle, settling to just sit there rigidly.
Sandor lifted his right hand while still holding her by the waist with his left, and traced the lines of her face with his fingers. He felt the silken feel of her hair and combed his fingers through it all the way to its ends, extending almost to her waist.
“Don’t fret girl, I am not going to hurt you or touch you – much.” Whether it assured her or not, he couldn’t say. She was sitting still, her head bowed towards the floor.
Sandor continued his exploration by brushing his fingertips down the side of her neck, sliding them across her collarbones and then to her shoulders and down the arms to her waist. He marvelled how small and delicate she was; he could cover her stomach completely with just one hand. He rested his right hand on her thigh, on top of the tunic. Its hem had hitched up slightly to reveal her bare knees, and while his hand was not moving, his little finger was resting on her bare skin. His whole existence on that moment seemed to concentrate to the tip of his finger touching lightly that small piece of skin – it almost felt hot to the touch.
Breaking the sensation he moved to grab her head, pushing it slightly aside to reveal her neck. After observing how her veins appeared faint blue below her skin he tentatively pressed his lips on it. The little bird tensed but still didn’t move. He pressed few feather-light kisses there, then moved to the hollow place under her throat and continued there with equally soft touches with his lips. He could feel the fast pulse of her heart but ignored it, thinking that he wasn’t really going to do anything bad to her; only hold and touch her for a while.
Eventually Sandor released her, pushing her back on the floor again. “You see, I told you I was not going to hurt you.” Sansa scrambled to her feet and moved quickly back to the bed, dropping on top of it and mechanically reaching for her sewing again. Yet she didn’t start working on it but just sat there, an expression he could not read flickering across her face.
Sandor started to feel uncomfortable and decided it was time for him to go and check that the new guards were doing their job properly. He rose, muttered something about a need to go and almost ran through the door, quietly cursing on his way out. I didn’t really even touch her – it could have been much worse had it been some other man here instead of me.