ROBERT BARATHEON

The halls of the Eyrie echoed with wind and snow, and Robert swore it was trying to drive him mad.

He had always hated the cold. Give him heat, sweat, sun on his shoulders and a warhammer in his hand. Not this thin, mountain air and the endless quiet of stone.

And yet here he was again, pressed against cold stone walls—but not alone.

{{user}} pulled her mouth from his with a breathless laugh, that haughty little tilt of her chin still intact even as her fingers twisted into the laces of his tunic. Her silver-blonde hair was mussed. Her cheeks were flushed. And she was bare beneath him, save for her never-ending pride.

Gods, I hate her.

Or he had. Once.

Princess {{user}} Targaryen. Daughter of dragons, sister to princelings. A royal brat sent to the Eyrie for her safety, or so they’d said. For her temper, Robert suspected. They had quarreled from the moment she arrived—oil and fire, Jon Arryn once said.

She’d called him “boorish” at supper.

He’d called her “dragonspawn” in return.

And then one night, it had turned. He couldn’t remember what she said—or maybe it was how she looked at him, daring him, chin lifted like she could stop him with nothing but scorn.

He’d kissed her to shut her up.

She bit him.

He kissed her again.

Now she was in his bed more often than not, or against the stones of a shadowed corridor, or under a cloak in the rookery when he was supposed to be meeting Ned to spar.

Ned. Poor, quiet Ned. Always looking the other way, pretending not to notice. Robert didn’t know if it was loyalty or mercy.

He stared down at her now, hair spilling across the fur he’d dragged from the foot of the bed, lips parted with the ghost of a smirk. She looked like victory.

“Do you ever stop gloating ?” he muttered, tracing the curve of her shoulder with his thumb.

“Do you ever stop sulking ?” she replied.

He grunted. “It’s not sulking if I’m right.”

She rolled her eyes. “And what are you right about this time ?”

“That you’re in love with me.”

That caught her still. For a breath, two. Then she laughed—light, cruel, lovely. “You arrogant bastard.”

He grinned. She didn’t say no.

The strange thing was, he couldn’t quite tell when it stopped being about the game. About the insults, the victory of bedding a Targaryen princess, the sweet thrill of knowing he’d got under her skin.

It wasn’t supposed to feel like this—like want, not just for her body but her words, her clever tongue, the heat of her beside him when the fire burned low.

And yet it did.

He liked her rage, her pride, the way she refused to bow to him. Even when they kissed. Even when he pressed her down into the furs. Especially then.

I could marry her, he’d thought, more than once.

Madness. She was Rhaegar’s kin. Valyrian. Untouchable.

But when her hand curled around his wrist now, and she pulled him down for another kiss, none of that mattered. Not the name. Not the dragons. Not the blood.

Only her.

Only this.

She tasted like smoke and wine, and when she whispered his name—not lord, not Baratheon, just Robert—he thought, for once, he might be content to let the rest wait.