Chapter Text
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I wait every night, listening for the footsteps that will tell me he's come to me again.
He doesn't visit because he loves me - she claimed his heart, long ago. He comes because I am the only one who can extinguish the fire that maddens him. An inferno that would consume her like kindling and turn her to ash.
Tonight he's quieter than usual, and takes me by surprise. Pulling my bedding off with a snap, he shoves me over onto my belly and sheathes himself in me with a grunt, his arm around my neck, half-crushing my windpipe. His boots scrape my ankles, catch and tear my sheets.
Foreplay is for women and virgins. I am neither.
The arm around my throat relaxes enough so that I can breathe, but I hold my breath anyhow, memorizing every sound of pleasure he makes, every sensation I feel, carefully storing them up. They're all I will have in the cold lonely weeks that will follow.
When he finishes he puts an arm around my waist and rolls us onto our sides without unseating himself. The pressure on my throat is gone; his calloused hand moves down to grasp me, pumping roughly. I know that he hates himself for needing this, hates me because I am not her, hates her because she cannot satisfy him the way I can. I am tighter, and hotter, and don't bruise as easily.
Usually he bites my shoulder, but tonight he presses his lips to my neck as gently as a lover would, and this shatters me … My seed covers his hand.
Still without speaking he pulls away from me and throws the coverlet back over me. A rustle of cloth as he puts himself back into his pants, then his boots click on my stone floor and he is gone.
She claimed his heart, but I have the rest.