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Chapter Text

Alicent stayed knelt on the cold concrete of the dressing room for several minutes after Rhaenyra got up and left her there. She stayed until her tingling, flaming body grew cold. She let the ground eat into her aching knees and pressed a little harder for good measure. Eventually the static coursing through her gave way to numbness.

She stood, slowly, stiffly, a white-knuckled hand bracing on the bench behind her for assistance. She opened her locker, stripped herself the rest of the way out of her leotard and tights, and pulled on her street clothes. Her mouth turned in discomfort at the feeling of her still-wet cunt against her underwear. She did not think about it.

She did not think about her.

She gnawed savagely at her fingertips, but tasted Rhaenyra there, mingling with the copper tang of her own blood. She dropped her hand from her lips as though it were laced with poison.

“Let go, Alicent.”

She didn’t think about it. She crossed to the sinks and turned on the tap, letting the cold water jet out of the rusted faucet over her curled, limp palms in the sink basin. When the shock of freezing water had returned her mind’s thundering roar to a dull buzz, she lathered on soap and began scrubbing furiously, like she could remove the stain of what she had done and wash it down the drain. She brought the water up to her mouth and chin to clean Rhaenyra’s drying slick off her, tasting soap.

“That’s right, make those pretty little sounds for me.”

She met her own empty gaze in the mirror. She looked wrecked. Her mascara was smudged around her eyes, her lips still a bit swollen and red, her cheeks blotchy. Her hair was utterly ruined by Rhaenyra’s hands, how they’d knotted in her curls and tugged her closer, ever closer to her gorgeous, weeping cunt. She didn’t think about it.

“That’s right, good girl.”

She couldn’t look at her own face anymore. She turned sharply, collected her bag from her locker, and made for the door. Her phone buzzed somewhere deep within her duffel. She scowled, fishing around till she found it and pulled it out.

Laenor: cum out tonite!!!!!

Her scowl deepened. He couldn’t know how right he was.

Sorry, would love to but unfortunately, I’ve got to literally get myself to a nunnery far, far away from here and spend the rest of my life repenting so that maybe one day I’ll forget what it’s like to have sex with Rhaenyra Targaryen and I’ll be able to function like a normal human being again.

Alicent: I can’t tonight, I’m sorry. Give Laena and Joffrey my love.

Laenor: booooo whore :(((((((((((((((((

Laenor: also u text like a psychopath

Whore indeed, Regina George. Alicent shoved her phone back in her bag, pulled her beanie over her mussed hair, and headed for the door.

She’d spent the last six years, likely longer, thinking about what it would feel like to have Rhaenyra, for Rhaenyra to have her. She’d been angry, she’d been desolate; on a few humiliating occasions she’d touched herself urgently under the covers to the fantasy of it and bit her lip to prevent her from calling out something so foolish as a name.

But she didn’t think about it. She pushed open the rear door, locked it behind her, and let the frigid wind bite her cheeks.

*******

Alicent dreamed of dark, loamy soil. Cool and dew-wet, covering her, burying her. She dreamed of a heart that did not beat, of safe heavy silence stretching in every direction.

Then something pulled her, summoned her from her bower bed under the earth. She emerged, slick and wet as a newborn calf into the moonlight. Rhaenyra’s face was the first thing she saw. The only thing she saw, as Rhaenyra forced her to be born again, forced breath caustic and cold back into her lungs, forced her atrophied heart to pump anew.

She hadn’t asked to be made alive again. 

She was so angry. Furious at having been risen. She wished to take the luminescent column of Rhaenyra’s neck and squeeze it hard between her hands until it was crushed.

But she couldn’t; she was under Rhaenyra’s thrall in the eerie moonlight. Rhaenyra had summoned her, and she was her creature.

And didn’t the fragile parts of her that allowed her to be pulled away from the sweet embrace of death preen at that? She was Rhaenyra’s, undeniably and in every breath, every movement. She belonged to her. She wanted to be part of her, wanted to swallow her whole, lay her claim in return.

She kissed Rhaenyra like a pledge, drinking warmth into her death-frozen body, defrosting. She became alive with flame, a burning that consumed them both.

They were in a forest. They were in the dressing room. They were on the couch of Alicent’s old flat all those years ago.

Rhaenyra’s fingers were filling her up, setting her body singing, writhing. She didn’t make Alicent beg for it, didn’t hold back. She gave her everything, a flood of filthy whispers making her toes curl as Alicent took and took and took.

Alicent felt her climax building within her, pulsing with a heat that threatened to turn her body fully human, completely vital, no longer a specter at all.

Then she was back on the forest floor and Rhaenyra was suddenly separate from her again. She stole herself away from Alicent, abandoning her wanting flesh. Rhaenyra’s rapturous expression morphed into one of ridicule, disgust above her.

No no no no, she couldn’t lose her, she couldn’t be made to live above the earth with this gaping hollow carved out of her to fit Rhaenyra so perfectly. Couldn’t know what it felt like to be whole, but live splintered.

She tried to call out, to plead and entreat her to stay, but she could make no sound.

*******

Alicent woke, bedsheets tangled around her and drenched in sweat. Even as anger and despair pursued her into the waking world, a hot, unsated need pulsed between her legs.

She groaned, cursed Rhaenyra once and herself twice over, and rolled her body over, pressing her face to her pillows. She slid her hand under the clammy skin of her belly and down, down, until her arm was trapped under her weight, fingers moving desperately through the humiliating, incriminating wetness between her legs.

*******

Alicent found herself between Laena and Laenor at the barre for class. Rhaenyra, by some miracle, was nowhere to be seen.

“We missed you at the club last night,” Laena leaned in to say quietly, in the pause between fondus and frappés.

“Sorry,” Alicent apologized, “Next time.” It wasn’t necessarily a lie.

“Everyone came out,” Laenor added unhelpfully, “Harwin, Mysaria… Rhaenyra.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

Alicent felt herself split between equally appalling reactions: a sharp jealousy at the images that suddenly, vibrantly, plagued her mind of Rhaenyra with the others on the dance floor, of Rhaenyra with Harwin or Mysaria, pressed close, moving in such a different way than they ever did in the studio or on the stage, gyrating and sweating under the strobing lights; or, perhaps more loathsome still, the pathetic urge to ask, “Did she say anything about me?”

The opening bars of the next number saved her from dignifying Laenor’s statement— or either of her own repugnant thoughts— with a reply. She attacked her frappés with a particular fervor, striking the floor hard with the ball of her foot again and again.

As they moved the barres away for centre work, Laena leaned close again. “I don’t know if you’ve spoken with her, but if you haven’t you should,” she said firmly, but not unkindly, “I refuse to get in the middle of whatever is going on between you, so I won’t say anything else after I say this. But I think you should talk.”

They set the barre down and made their way back to the middle of the floor.

“My cousin was failing to be the life of the party,” she said, and then a bit guiltily, as though she thought better about sharing it but continued anyway, “And she talked about you.”

Alicent blanched. Rhaenyra must have been furious, she reasoned. Must have spit barbs about her, in the sympathetic company of her friends and cousins. At least it didn’t seem like she had revealed anything about their… encounter in the dressing room. Her secret, her shame was safe. For the time being.

Whatever Alicent felt, it didn’t matter. In a few months, Rhaenyra would be gone again. What they shared, the longing and the vitriol, Rhaenyra would leave it behind like it was nothing. And Alicent would remain, as she always had.

*******

The days passed, somehow. Act One rehearsals tore up her feet, bursting open blisters and making her nailbeds bleed. She committed and recommitted herself to the work. She took every note, honed her body into a sharp, glittering instrument. She held her tongue in family dinners and quietly picked at her cuticles while her father spoke. She didn’t look for Rhaenyra in every studio, in every hall.

But she found her anyway. It was only a matter of time.

Alicent arrived at the studio early on a Sunday morning, planning to work through several Giselle variations where she felt perfection still evaded her. The building was quiet, peaceful in a way it never was on weekdays when dancers filled the halls and studios.

A soft melody drew her down the corridor to a small practice room with the door slightly ajar. A “littles” class was in full swing, complete with the toddling chaos that so often characterized them. Like herding kittens, she thought with fondness.

Her gaze was quickly pulled, however, to the front of the room where Rhaenyra’s bright smile seemed to glow. She was demonstrating the moves, mirroring the children as she called out each step patiently, watching her tiny squadron of assembled devotees as they did their best to copy her.

“Now let’s see your pointed toes! Are you sickling your feet?” She called out to the class jovially. “You know what happens to sickle pickles,” she paused, building suspense in the already tittering class, “I feed them to Syrax!” She pointed to the yellow dragon stuffie perched on a speaker at the front of the room. Her class erupted in little shrieks and giggles.

Rhaenyra’s face was radiant, her eyes squinting slightly with her wide grin.

When she caught Alicent watching from the doorway, her expression faltered slightly. Alicent found she could do nothing but offer a soft smile and a nod, the sweet scene sapping her of all her defensive bite. A matching smile slowly returned to Rhaenyra’s face, wary, almost shy at first, but making its way steadily up to her eyes and gleaming there.

Alicent felt her heart flip over itself a few times in her chest. She offered one last smile before ducking her head and retreating back into the hall.

*******

It was just Alicent, Corlys, Criston, and Rhaenyra in the studio for the end of Act Two.

Alicent and Criston danced their reunion, light quick movements and sweeping lifts illustrating the initial joy at having found each other. Criston was a good partner if nothing else— steadfast, strong, never stealing the audience’s gaze. He functioned like another piece of the set, a photographer’s reflector, shining Alicent’s light back on herself.

As their dance drew to a close, Corlys called out for Rhaenyra to enter from stage left.

Facing Criston, breathing deeply from the exertion as she prepared for the next sequence, Alicent could feel Rhaenyra’s approach at her back. Corlys called out the counts, preparing Alicent to move without looking behind her.

Rhaenyra raised her arm, pulling back as though to strike Criston through with a lance, and Alicent’s arm followed. Both trembled on the tips of their toes, the tension hanging thick in the air. Rhaenyra urged Alicent forward, and Alicent let her raised arm shake as she portrayed the internal struggle between following the Queen’s command and defying it. When she would not bend, Alicent felt Rhaenyra’s hand grasp her wrist. Her touch was deceptively gentle, even as her arm shook with isometric force to convey the power in this fight between wills. Rhaenyra drew her arm back again, physically preparing Alicent to strike Criston as he stood frozen before them.

Before Rhaenyra could compel her to land the blow, Alicent spun in a soutenu to face her instead, her back to Criston. Still joined by their hands, it was Alicent’s turn to grip Rhaenyra’s wrist and pull her poised fist to her own heart instead of Criston’s, her body a shield. Rhaenyra’s face and poise conveyed her confusion, her dismay at Giselle’s choice.

Crison backed away while Alicent and Rhaenyra remained locked in their unbroken, furious embrace, Alicent’s face beseeching for mercy, Rhaneyra’s in uncomprehending anger.

Alicent’s blood pulsed hard in her chest. She tried to divorce her own heart from the emotion of the scene. Rhaenyra met her gaze with a trusting, quiet confidence, an understanding. She gave her an almost imperceptible nod before releasing her. She was so beautiful, so full of barely restrained power, like a bow string pulled taut. Alicent released her own grasp milliseconds later, a delay she could see Rhaenyra felt in the brief flicker of her expression.

“Yes, yes!” Corlys called, egging them on.

With Alicent out of Rhaenyra’s hands, Criston reached for her, stretching out yearning arms. Alicent did her best to match his feeling. She swept past him to his other side, as if passing through him like a ghost. Again, he reached for her and she reached for him in return, their hands failing to meet in the middle, each extending beyond the other.

They met again, this time for a closer pas. Alicent reached her hand to caress the grooves of Criston’s face, tried not to cringe back when he did the same to her, forced herself to lean in instead. As they turned around each other, she caught a glimpse of Rhaenyra, retreated to the back left corner of the floor, posture taut, gaze trained on her. She watched with disdain, and yet too with barely contained desire.

Before long, Rhaenyra cut in again, driving a swath between Alicent and Criston with her body. Criston’s expression of irritation looked almost too real.

Rhaenyra bade him dance, and he was forced to comply, executing strong leaps and turns in the air. The power of her command at last brought him to his knees and he bowed, collapsing before her.

Alicent ran to put herself between them, arms outstretched. Rhaenyra gave her a look of betrayal Alicent imagined she didn’t need to dig too deep to summon.

It was time for their final dance.

Leaving Criston where he shuffled back on the floor in fear, Alicent reached for Rhaenyra. Before she could think about it, she drew her close. She waited for Corlys to intervene at this slight deviation from the choreography but no interruption came.

She drew Rhaenyra’s hand to her hip, and placed her own hand Rhaenyra’s in turn. They circled each other, bound together. The rest of the room dropped away like curtains falling, enshrouding the two of them in this final fight for power, duty, vengeance, love. Each movement one of them made was balanced by the other, a mirrored battle of two wills.

And at last, as the imagined sun broke over the forest canopy, Alicent took Rhaenyra’s hand in hers and they glided, one slow step morphing into the next, away from the audience, away from Criston’s desperate reaching hand. Away, together, into the mist of dawn.

*******

When Corlys called the rehearsal to a close and released them, Alicent made for the door. Before she could make her escape, however, Criston caught her, his hand coming to rest proprietorially on her bare upper arm.

“Wanted to ask if you might like to get a drink with me,” he said, “It’s been a while, and I thought—”

Alicent turned her body away slightly, with all the subtlety she could muster, until his hand dropped from where it touched her skin. “I can’t tonight. Some other time, yeah?” She said gently, adding “I owe Laena and Laenor a trip to the pub. Maybe we can all go out after rehearsal some time.” She hoped her meaning was sufficiently conveyed, the rejection kind but firm.

Disappointment was clear in Criston’s eyes, but he nodded and took his leave quickly.

She felt Rhaenyra pass before she saw her. Rhaenyra’s shoulder brushed hers ever so faintly as she walked by her towards the hall. Alicent caught a little satisfied smirk on her face as she passed.

*******

Alicent sat in her middle splits, stretching out her legs and resting on her forearms as she watched the video play back on her phone.

The studio was quiet this late in the evening, the perfect time to work on a bit of her own choreography without being interrupted, or worse— perceived.

It wasn’t the easiest thing to choreograph a dance alone. But it would be harder still to outwardly acknowledge the vulnerable wanting inherent in setting out to create something of her own. She was a ballet dancer, nothing more, she knew. She was good for executing someone else’s grand vision, not charting her own course. There were parts of her that spoke in her father’s voice, telling her she shouldn’t be so bold as to think herself creative or qualified enough to sit in the choreographer’s chair. That she was foolish for playing pretend in this way.

But perhaps the years had quieted those parts of her. Their commands rang softer in her ears. And so she reserved studio space on quiet nights here and there to work on her own pieces. She indulged the brave, greedy parts of herself those nights. The parts that wished for something more. The parts that Rhaenyra had seen and reached for all those years ago.

She watched herself dance on her small phone screen, playing some parts of the video back several times to catch a transition or a step that wasn’t quite right. She jotted down neat notes in her notebook where she wanted to change the choreography.

Satisfied as well as she could be and prepared to try the piece again with her adjustments, she gave a deep sigh and hoisted herself to standing. She balanced her phone against the mirror on the bar, pressed record, and took her starting place in the middle of the room.

She worked without music, counting out the beats in her head to focus on perfecting the shapes and paths she charted across the floor. She danced barefoot, the holes cut in the soles of her tights allowing her to roll them up around her ankles. The dance she was working on was more in the realm of contemporary ballet than the classical ballet she did in her formal career. Her movements, while still well-studied and exact, felt freer than anything she did in class or rehearsal. Each deviation from traditional form was a careful choice, a rule broken on purpose to better communicate a feeling or emotion. She ran through the piece again— as much as she had planned so far— and then stopped and sat to review the footage again.

There was something that just wasn’t clicking, she thought with frustration, scrubbing back and forth on the little bar at the bottom of the screen and seeing her own miniature scrabble forward in fast motion and then in reverse.

A creak from the corridor caught her attention and her head snapped to the door, heart pounding slightly from the surprise and the strange juvenile feeling of being caught doing something she shouldn’t.

It was Rhaenyra in the doorway. The look on her strong face was soft, almost fond. A half-smile tugged at the corner of her lips. Alicent wanted to be angry with the intrusion but found she couldn’t quite conjure the emotion, though her heart did beat in double time.

Rhaenyra didn’t offer an apology for her presence, but didn’t advance into the room either. She held her position, the dark hall silhouetting her, giving her the appearance of glowing slightly. “That’s beautiful, Alicent,” she said softly, something unreadable on her face.

Alicent had to look up from her place on the floor to meet her gaze, feeling a bit like a penitent, or perhaps an effigy of some martyred saint. She gave Rhaenyra a tentative smile, unsure why the quiet, kind words made her eyes sting with unshed tears.

Seeing Alicent’s failure to turn her away, Rhaenyra took a few more steps into the light. “Remember that teacher we had in year five who said you’d be good at choreography?”

Alicent gave a little snort, “I do remember that, but Miss K. was being an underhanded old hag. She meant I didn’t have what it took to be a ballerina so I should consider alternatives. Not all of us were blessed from birth with natural talent, Rhaenyra,” she meant the words to come out with more bite than they did. Instead, they sounded rueful more than anything.

She did have to work for it. Hard. While Rhaenyra had always seemed fluent, effortless with an innate gift for dance, Alicent had always had to toil. It would have made her mad as a child, if Rhaenyra hadn’t met her own good fortune with unpretentious exuberance. Watching her dance just made you feel happy for the chance to be close by, if even in the audience.

“Hogwash,” Rhaenyra said with a laugh, “You were always brilliant.” She came to lean against the bar near Alicent, who stood to even the playing field between them.

Alicent rolled her eyes. “I suppose there’s no use asking why you’re here or telling you off for coming after hours.”

Rhaenyra laughed good-naturedly, still maintaining a bit of distance between their bodies where they now stood facing one another. “Of course not, even if I didn’t have express permission to be here, you could never put me off with your finger wagging. It just adds to the thrill.”

Alicent huffed, but couldn’t help the smile shining in her eyes. It felt good to talk to Rhaenyra like this again.

“Do you often work on your choreography here?”

“Are you asking if I ‘come here often’?” Alicent teased.

“Suppose I am. I’d find myself here a great deal more often if I knew there was a private dance on offer.” She raised an eyebrow with joking lasciviousness.

Alicent gave her a sound whack on the arm for that and renewed the physical distance between them.

Rhaenyra held both hands up in surrender. She regarded Alicent thoughtfully, silent for a moment before appearing to make up her mind to speak. “I could help, if you wanted,” she said, almost shy again, her previous bravado dropped for a real vulnerability that was so much more disarming. “It’s hard to act as both dancer and choreographer, and you can’t make changes in real time if you’re just going off your recording. Why don’t you teach me the steps and I’ll perform it for you.”

Alicent tried to find a reason to say no. Truthfully, she came up with no shortage of arguments and yet her better judgement seemed to have left the building, as it so often did when Rhaenyra was around.

“Go on then,” Alicent said with a small smile.

Alicent was an exacting choreographer, which surely came as a surprise to no one who claimed to know her. After she talked Rhaenyra through the steps, demonstrating a movement here and there, she stood pensively at the front of the room, arms crossed, a fist supporting her chin.

“No, give that more space,” she said, watching Rhaenyra whirl from a series of leaps into crouched movements close to the floor.

“Like that, but instead of ‘ba da da da huh’, give me ‘ba da la de dun,’” marking the movements and describing them with that inscrutable dancer’s language of sounds and counts.

“Try that again, but reach your left arm instead.”

“No, the count is one two three four, not one two three four. Again.”

Through it all, Rhaenyra was quiet and focused. She took each of Alicent’s corrections and changes on the chin, simply giving a nod each time Alicent called out to her and quickly instituting the new direction.

She was magnificent to behold in the low lights of the practice room, vaulting across the floor like she was weightless, bounding with all that coiled power in her muscles, and yet coming to absolute stillness in a second, balanced on a single leg. Her breaths and the beat of her feet on the floor were all the music Alicent could ever ask for. She would craft a thousand dances just to have Rhaenyra move for her this way.

A dangerous thought.

But somehow, the movements looked better with Rhaenyra dancing them, the ideas flowed freely. It was indeed easier to play only the role of choreographer, rather than splitting her time and energy between creating and executing. But it felt like there was something more. Rhaenyra embodied the piece so perfectly, fit into it like a second skin. It was like it was made for her.

Maybe it was. Maybe everything she’d ever crafted, every dance she’d ever made had been for Rhaenyra.

Dangerous, dangerous.

As the piece tightened up, Alicent took out her phone to record again, so that she could capture the improvements they’d made.

They worked that way for over an hour, as sweat began to break over Rhaenyra’s brow in pearls and her loose tank stuck to her body. The exertion had made pink bloom on her cheeks and chest. Heat coiled low and simmering in Alicent’s belly watching her.

She kept her hands to herself, one fest clenched tight in the fabric of her shirt as if to keep it from reaching out to touch Rhaenyra of its own volition.

At last, Rhaenyra looked to the clock, “Got to run, I’m afraid.”

“Ah yes. Well, that’s quite enough for tonight, I think.” Alicent agreed, though her heart rebelled.

Rhaenyra hummed her assent, lifting her shirt to wipe at her forehead, exposing an utterly sinful sliver of her toned stomach.

“I’ll see you around, Alicent,” she said as she turned and walked towards the door.

“Rhaenyra, wait—” Alicent called.

Rhaenyra turned back to look at her, searching her face.

“Thank you, I— thank you.” Alicent said, and meant it. If she were being honest, she meant more, much more that she could not put to paltry words in that moment. But this admission, this tentative outstretched hand, already made her heart rate quicken as though she were trapped in a lion’s maw.

Rhaenyra seemed to understand. She nodded and gave Alicent a genuine smile, one that just touched the corners of her eyes. Alicent’s traitor heart sang.

And then Rhaenyra turned again and slipped through the door.

*******

Sitting against the headboard of her bed, knees curled to her chest, Alicent tried not to watch the video back. She held her phone in her hands like a grenade— dangerous, doomed. For all her efforts, her normally iron will was feeble in the dark of her bedroom with a little figment of Rhaenyra so close to her fingertips.

She played the video. The one of Rhaenyra performing Alicent’s dance for her. Her heart constricted painfully, with simultaneous satisfaction and unquenchable longing. Pixels so close, and yet the real living, breathing flesh achingly far away.

She drew her legs tighter against herself and propped her chin on one knee, gaze fixed on Rhaenyra’s movements on her screen. When the video stopped, she started it over again. She replayed it again and again, eventually tipping to one side to continue to watch from the fetal position until her eyes grew heavy.

She fell asleep with her phone clutched to her chest, screen dark but still open to the video’s final frame.

*******

A week later, same time same place.

As Alicent unlocked the practice room and flipped on a few of the lights, she couldn’t snuff the naïve hope that grew in the cage of her ribs, thinking maybe Rhaenyra would come to find her again. She hated herself for wishing, but it didn’t stop the feeling. It was becoming abundantly clear that nothing could.

She set her things down on the floor in a little heap and began stretching. She resolved to go through her routine as she would normally. It would be foolish to sit waiting for Rhaenyra to show (and she didn’t want to jinx it.) She started seated and slow, waking up cold muscles, rolling out joints. She bent forward over her legs and forced her feet to point until her toes touched the floor, palms pressing the stretch deeper into her arches. She stood and grasped the barre to swing one leg back and forth, warming up her hips and getting the blood flowing, then turned to do the other leg.

She was beginning to think Rhaenyra wasn’t coming. She had been so foolish to believe she would. She wished more than anything she didn’t feel so damned disappointed. She had lived for six years without her, hadn’t she? She had learned how to be alone because she had to. Because she had carefully crafted a beautiful prison for herself and then so bravely suffered her internment.

Foolish, foolish girl. Her own voice? Her father’s?

Did it matter?

She dug her fingernails into her palm to steady herself and told herself to just get on with it. She knelt to dig for her phone in her bag, and then rose to balance it on its spot on the barre to record.

But then she turned.

And there she was.

“I thought I might find you here,” Rhaenyra said by way of greeting, tucking a stray strand of silver hair behind her ear as she leaned in the open doorway.

Alicent’s heart hammered so loud in her ears she could barely hear her own thoughts to conjure a witty reply.

“Stalking me now, are you?” Alicent asked, though she couldn’t make it sharp. Couldn’t even stop the wry smile as it turned her lips.

“Just can’t seem to get enough,” Rhaenyra answered with a sultry raise of her eyebrows, her posture becoming noticeably more relaxed once she heard Alicent’s almost playful tone.

“Oh hush you,” Alicent gave a little huff that did nothing to dim the smile growing on Rhaenyra’s lips. “Here to be my stand-in, then?”

“I prefer muse.”

Alicent snorted. Rhaenyra crossed the space in long strides, pulling her jumper over her head to reveal a loose t-shirt that fell off one shoulder, showing off the strap of her sports bra. If Alicent’s mouth watered, the view surely had nothing to do with it.

“Let’s run it through once. See what you remember.” Alicent tried for gruff, though she could tell she landed short.

Rhaenyra remembered everything. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been surprised, given Rhaenyra’s easy genius, the way everything seemed to come to her so naturally. But even still, Alicent felt a bit giddy, touched almost. Rhaenyra took her choreography seriously. She always had, she supposed, even when Alicent didn’t.

I seemed, perhaps, that Rhaenyra cared. She didn’t know what to do with that.

“This is what I’m thinking for the next sequence,” Alicent said instead of the myriad things she might have otherwise, and demonstrated the next series of steps she had come up with, Rhaenyra’s attentive eye trained on her all the while.

Watching Rhaenyra move was more like religion—closer to God— than she’d felt in her life, even as a pious young girl in an ancient church pew. She was liquid, she was marble, she was quivering strength and searing gentleness. And she moved as Alicent willed her, yes, but also something more— she gave something of herself when she danced that couldn’t be matched and couldn’t be choreographed.

Never mind that she was absolutely, devastatingly, smoking hot. Alicent had always thought her fit, even before she could comprehend the desire behind that observation. But the years had only honed her into an ever more perfect shape. The shallow lines only just starting to show in the corners of her handsome face, the way her skin pulled taut over her cheekbones and the finely crafted planes of her cheeks. The slight dimple of her chin.

And her body. Once spindly with youth, now she was still lean, but so powerful, so solid. The ropes of muscle in her graceful arms danced under the warm light. The generous curves of her deltoids when a raised arm bared her shoulder made Alicent want to sink her teeth into them. Even under her trackies, there was no hiding how toned her legs were.

Of course, Alicent knew that intimately, now. She actually had to physically shake her head to bring herself back to the moment.

She watched as Rhaenyra moved her arm in a sweeping parabola over her head. Something about the movement just didn’t feel quite right for the piece. Before she could think about it, she was crossing the floor to stand just behind Rhaenyra, bodies a hair’s breadth apart. Alicent reached out to take Rhaenyra’s right wrist in her own right hand, her left touching feather-light at Rhaenyra’s waist. She barely had to lay down any pressure at all for Rhaenyra to follow her willingly, her body completing the movements Alicent hinted at as she traced Rhaenyra’s arm above her head, pressing against her left side slightly to exaggerate the lateral curve of her body into a near half-moon.

Alicent’s eyes were locked on their reflection in the mirror, their bodies near indistinguishable in their closeness. A creature with four arms and four legs and two beating hearts.

She couldn’t stop herself. She kept their right arms joined by her light grasp, moving her left hand to gently fall to the very top of Rhaenyra’s back, gently guiding her to bend, following the gravity of her arm, tipping forward and to the left in a stunning, fluid arc. Studying the pair of them in the mirror, she dropped her hand and bent so she could draw Rhaenyra’s right leg out to the slide to complete the dramatic line of her body, feeling the shifting sinew under her hands.

“Yes. Yes!” She said, not hiding her excitement at seeing it right. “Give me that again.”

Rhaenyra’s throat worked as she nodded and found her place on the floor, ready to run through the last few steps again. Alicent separated from her and moved to the front of the room to watch for herself.

Alicent felt a bit bolder after that, seizing every little opportunity to minimize the distance between them and direct Rhaenyra’s body with her hands.

It was good, she conceded. Maybe even really good. And despite the way her pulse quickened and her thoughts strayed with Rhaenyra around, it was also paradoxically easy. Creating with her felt natural. It pulled new, thrilling greatness from both of them.

At last, when Alicent directed Rhaenyra through a turn, Rhaenyra caught Alicent’s hand in hers, spinning her as well, making her gasp and give a peal of laughter in her surprise. Rhaenyra didn’t release her when Alicent completed her rotation. Instead, she drew her in close, a hand finding her hip like it was always meant to be there. Like it had never been anywhere else.

Alicent swallowed, her pulse leaping at her chest and wrists and throat. The pull between them was nothing short of magnetic.

How she wanted. How could she not?

Rhaenyra searched her eyes for a moment, a held breath in the soft quiet of the studio, and then she kissed her.

Alicent melted into it, twining her arms around Rhaenyra, pulling her closer, closer. Rhaenyra’s hand at her hip was grounding, possessive. She brought her other hand to Alicent’s jaw, caressing her, tilting her chin up to better match their searching, seeking, desperate lips together. Alicent needed her kiss like air, felt like she was drowning each time she had to break from Rhaenyra’s lips for a breath.

Alicent slipped her fingers through Rhaenyra’s choppy hair, her nails scratching at her scalp the way she always used to love. Rhaenyra moaned, low into Alicent’s mouth. Alicent was mere moments from begging to taste her again, right there on the studio floor.

At last, Rhaenyra drew her head back slightly, both hands on Alicent’s face, thumbs tracing her cheekbones, chest rising and falling heavily.

“Fuck,” Alicent said, voice strained, her own breaths coming hard.

“Fuck,” Rhaenyra agreed with a short laugh, the yearning bare in her voice. “Alicent, let me—can I drive you home?”

Alicent couldn’t make herself refuse, not with her body singing in Rhaenyra’s grasp, not with Rhaenyra looking at her like that. In fact, she found she could do nothing but lay down all her cards.

“Your home?”

The smile that bloomed on Rhaenyra’s face was near-blinding in its brilliance. “Yes,” she said, “Yes, I’ll take you to my home. I’ll take you home.”

*******

Of course, Rhaenyra had a godforsaken car in London, and of course it was a gaudy fucking thing, all sleek lines and rumbling horsepower. At least Alicent found it within her to snark to Rhaenyra about the absurdity of it— she hadn’t completely lost her mind.

But Rhaenyra’s hand splayed high on her thigh cut Alicent’s teasing short as she deftly peeled off onto the street.

It was a short drive to Rhaenyra’s flat, made shorter by her taste for speed and her debonair attitude towards traffic laws. Alicent couldn’t bring herself to complain, her body nearly vibrating in the seat with her need to get her hands on Rhaenyra again.

They pulled up outside a beautiful old townhouse, deep brown brick and white stone and Rhaenyra cut the engine.

Rhaenyra gave Alicent’s leg a squeeze and then opened her door and climbed out. Alicent opened her door as well, so as not to give Rhaenyra the satisfaction of doing it for her. But Rhaenyra jogged around the front of the car in time to offer Alicent a chivalrous hand to help her to her feet anyway. Alicent took it, and she let Rhaenyra press her back into the door after she closed it behind her too, mouthing hungrily up her neck.

She didn’t keep her outside too long, taking pity on Alicent’s freezing ears and nose, and no doubt spurred by the little demanding noises she made at the back of her throat as Rhaenyra worked her up again so easily. She took Alicent’s hand and led her up the steps, pulling keys from her pocket and letting them both into the foyer.

Rhaenyra’s flat was gorgeous in the way that only old money could buy— not ostentatious or loud, as Alicent thought it might be, but quietly lux. Wealth that didn’t need to shout. And yet it was homey in a way, studded with little hallmarks of Rhaenyra’s life, of her living in it.

Alicent didn’t have long to take it in, however, despite her inclination to snoop. Rhaenyra was pressing her back into the heavy oak door, kissing her long and deep, making her feel heady and breathless. Then, before she could put her head on straight again, Rhaenyra spun her and pressed her front to the door instead, her warm body pressing into her from behind. Rhaenyra stripped her jacket from her shoulders and discarded it with her own somewhere on the floor behind them.

Alicent gasped at the pressure and the feeling of Rhaenyra’s breasts and hips at her back. Rhaenyra swept Alicent’s hair to the side and renewed her exploration of Alicent’s neck with her lips and tongue, pulling her shirt to the side to continue marking a path over every piece of Alicent’s skin she could get at.

Alicent turned her head to watch Rhaenyra’s mouth on her and capture her lips in a searing, if somewhat strained kiss. She couldn’t even feel the discomfort of the difficult angle of her neck with the sensation of Rhaenyra all around her so utterly encompassing. She pushed her ass back against Rhaenyra, grinding as best she could with Rhaenyra’s weight still pinning her to the door.

Rhaenyra groaned at the contact and used her hands pressed hard into Alicent’s hips to draw her ass even more closely nestled against her.

“How is it you know exactly what to do to drive me mad?” Rhaenyra husked into the curve of Alicent’s neck.

She loosened her grip enough for Alicent to turn back around and meet her heated, hungry gaze. With the renewed freedom, Alicent hiked her leg around Rhaenyra, her knee kissing Rhaenyra’s hip, and pulled her into another bruising kiss. Rhaenyra slipped her leg between Alicent’s and pressed her thigh against her center. Alicent felt her body spark like a live wire at the contact.

She was already so wet. She knew a dark spot had been blooming at the crotch of her panties since the kiss at the studio—if not before, just watching Rhaenyra move, though she was loath to admit it— and now the evidence of her arousal, her desperation for Rhaenyra, would be undeniable.

She wanted Rhaenyra to feel it. She wanted to watch her eyes widen when she saw what she had done to her, wanted to see that carnivorous predator’s spark in her eyes, twisting her expression into something dark and cunning and beautiful.

She couldn’t deny the ferocity of her need for Rhaenyra, not anymore, not here in Rhaenyra’s home, with her mouth laying claim to her and her hands charting paths of fire along her skin.

What she couldn’t understand— even with Rhaenyra’s tongue lapping into her mouth and her thigh grinding tantalizingly against her cunt— was why Rhaenyra was choosing her. Why after all this time? And worse, why her at all?

She knew the shape of her own desire, knew the convoluted topography of the knot of love and heartbreak and longing that lived within her chest. But Rhaenyra was, and always had seemed, a star— a fiery burning comet, untethered from any kind of earthly bounds. Defiant in her freedom. Alicent had felt herself lucky, at times, for the chance cross her flightpath. At many others, she cursed the first time she had caught sight of Rhaenyra and wished.

 How could it be that Rhaenyra would choose her now, when Alicent had chosen wrong so many times before?

“Why— what do you want with me?” she asked, unable to stop the slight wobble in her voice.

Rhaenyra stopped her advances then, bringing both hands to cup Alicent’s face, gently but with firm intensity.

“Alicent, you are everything.” Rhaenyra’s voice was low, serious and earnest. “You’re all I want. Everything you are," she said, "Even if you deny it, I refuse to: I want you.”

Alicent’s hands found Rhaenyra’s cheeks as she surged up to kiss her, her heart roaring, exultant.

“I’ve always wanted you, Rhaenyra. I’ve never stopped.” She whispered the admission against Rhaenyra’s lips before crashing her mouth against her again, all teeth and tongue and demanding, starving hunger.

She couldn’t dwell on the gravity of these confessions, not in that moment with their bodies still hot against each other, not with her pulsing, needy cunt demanding Rhaenyra’s touch. She would have to confront it, in time, she knew. And she would. Perhaps they would do it together.

“Alicent,” Rhaenyra said, pressing another kiss to her lips, “We should talk… about this… us.” She ran her hands up and down Alicent’s sides.

“Yes,” Alicent conceded, moving her hands to cover Rhaenyra’s gently. She knew it was true. “And we will. But not tonight.”

“Not tonight,” Rhaenyra agreed, and pulled Alicent down the hall. “Right now I need you naked and writhing beneath me on my bed, screaming my name and begging to come.”

Alicent swatted her arm and huffed, but followed her into her bedroom anyway, without hesitation.

“In your dreams.”

“Yes, in fact in several very specific dreams—” Rhaenyra said over her shoulder with a cheeky grin, but Alicent cut her off by pushing her onto the bed. Rhaenyra let herself fall back, though with her grace and strength she surely could have fought it if she had any inclination to do so. She leaned back on her elbows, legs spread, taking in the sight of Alicent before her.

Rhaenyra had far too many clothes on. Alicent advanced on her and made for the waistband of Rhaenyra’s trousers, but Rhaenyra sat up and caught her hands.

“Ah ah, patience my dear,” she teased. She smoothed her hands up Alicent’s torso, first over her shirt, than under, her touch raising gooseflesh on Alicent’s belly. She drew the hem of Alicent’s shirt up, and Alicent pulled it the rest of the way off, along with her bra.

Rhaenyra let out a low rumble at the view, somewhere between a groan and a purr. She held Alicent’s hips and pressed her mouth to the skin of her belly, kissing and nipping everywhere she could reach. Alicent felt her stomach muscles jump and tense under Rhaenyra’s attention, breathy little moans spilling from her mouth. Rhaenyra took her time, tracing her palms across Alicent’s skin, up her back, over her breasts, pinching at her already hardened nipples to make her gasp and press her legs together in a poor attempt to sate the pulsating need at her core.

When Rhaenyra had her fill, having left a patchwork of little red marks and shimmering spit across her pale skin, she slipped Alicent's trousers down her legs, leaving her bare except for a pair of lacy emerald green panties. Perhaps, perhaps, some part of her had chosen them with this eventuality in mind.

“So fucking beautiful,” Rhaenyra breathed caressing her and letting her hands wander down to squeeze and kneed her ass. “So perfect.”

Then her hand snaked around to feel how the underwear was utterly drenched between her thighs. Her breath hitched, and she let her knuckles trace languidly over Alicent’s slit through the ruined fabric.

“All this for me, baby?” she asked, voice low and velvet with a teasing lilt. Alicent couldn’t deny it. Didn’t want to. She could only moan and buck her hips into Rhaenyra’s touch, begging for more.

“So fucking good. So perfect.” Rhaenyra hooked her fingers under the elastic of her panties and drew them down her legs, letting her step out of them and baring her entirely.

“Rhaenyra if you don’t let me take your clothes off soon, I swear—”

Her threats were somewhat diminished when she was putty in Rhaenyra’s wandering hands. But Rhaenyra, ever beneficent, gave her a wide indulgent smile and pulled her own t-shirt and bra over her head in a fluid motion.

With each passing heartbeat Alicent only felt herself become more and more desperate to see Rhaenyra’s body on full naked display, to claim Rhaneyra as she had claimed her. Rhaenyra raised her hips and let Alicent tug her trousers off, along with her boxers.

“Impatient,” Rhaenyra tsked, eyeing Alicent with an invitation. A challenge.

Alicent moved to straddle her lap where she sat on the edge of the bed, her knees on either side of Rhaenyra’s hips. Rhaenyra looked up at her, eyes shining with open lust and unguarded devotion. Alicent found herself almost blinded. She tucked her head into the crook of Rhaenyra’s neck and pressed hot, open-mouthed kisses there, nipping and sucking just enough to hear Rhaenyra’s breathing stutter. She brought her hands to Rhaenyra’s breasts, caressing the pert peaks of them, their soft, modest curves. She brushed her thumbs over her pink nipples feather-light, drawing a gasp from Rhaenyra and causing her hips to buck beneath her.

Then she reached her hand between them, her fingers tracing over her mound and through her warm wet folds. That feeling alone sent another flood of arousal between her own spread legs. She rocked her hips forward, grinding her own cunt against the back of her wrist as she pressed her hand more firmly into Rhaenyra’s slick heat. They shared a gasp at their twin pleasure.

Alicent slid her fingers up and down Rhaenyra’s cunt, the angle not quite right to meet her entrance but perfect to slip and tease around her hard clit.

Alicent had to pull her attention from her neck to take in the sight of their hot, dripping cunts so close they were nearly touching, separated only by Alicent’s hand driving them both wild with need. When she mustered the strength to raise her head again from that mouth-watering sight, she found that Rhaenyra was watching where they met in her lap with just as much rapt attention. It was hypnotizing, she had to admit, seeing her hips roll under Rhaenyra’s hands, the way the meat of her thighs gave way in pillowed indents where they clutched against Rhaenyra’s toned quads. The way Rhaenyra’s beautiful, sculpted stomach quivered each time Alicent rolled her fingers over her clit.

“You feel so amazing against me,” Rhaenyra murmured against her mouth, “You make me feel so good.”

Impatient, and finding she might combust if she had to wait a second longer to taste Rhaenyra’s cunt again, she used a hand on Rhaenyra’s collarbone to press her back onto the sheets. Rhaenyra got the message and shifted herself back on the bed to accommodate Alicent as she advanced on hands and knees, too overwhelmed with need to save her pride.

She crawled up Rhaenyra’s body until their tits pressed against each other and claimed her lips in a deep, hungry kiss. Rhaenyra’s nimble hands caressed across her bare back to palm her ass, surely leaving reddening indents where her fingers squeezed indulgently. Alicent moaned into the kiss and Rhaenyra slipped her hands just a bit further down to where her thighs met her cheeks, spreading her apart even further. Alicent whined at the slight stretch of it, the way it made her cunt clench, yearning to be filled.

But Alicent couldn’t have that. Not yet. She took Rhaenyra’s bottom lip between her teeth and sucked it before releasing it to clamber back down her body to take up residence between her gorgeous muscular thighs. Rhaenyra smelled so fucking good, sweat and musk, woodsy deodorant and smokey rich cologne. Her cunt bloomed, deep pink and drenched for her. She let herself succumb to her most base impulses.

She drank from her. She lavished the whole of her pussy with her tongue, lapping up her heady, rich slick. She could drown happily in Rhaenyra’s cunt, she thought. No heaven could be sweeter than this taste and the musical moans she drew from Rhaenyra's sinful mouth.

She cast her gaze up the smooth expanse of Rhaenyra’s body, to find her propped on one arm, watching her with an expression of utter rapture. Alicent redoubled her efforts, intent on destroying any willpower that remained to hold her up. She wanted Rhaenyra broken into beautiful pieces for her, needed Rhaenyra wrecked like she was wrecked.

“Fuck darling, yes,” Rhaenyra groaned above her, canting her hips into Alicent’s tongue. “Just like that. So good, so good to me.” She chanted the praise, moaning, stoking the fire in Alicent’s belly and spurring her on. “Yes, fuck, that’s right. Just like that.”

Alicent flicked her tongue hard and relentless against Rhaenyra’s clit, reveling in the way her legs clenched around her head. She built and built the pressure, refusing to let up until Rhaenyra’s head fell back and her back arched off the bed, consumed by her release, hips stuttering demandingly against her mouth. Alicent kept licking and sucking as she came down, moaning low with the aftershocks of her orgasm. When at last the taut wire of her body relaxed into the bed, Alicent pulled her head back to rest one sticky wet cheek on Rhaenyra’s thigh, watching as her breathing gradually evened out.

“Come here,” Rhaenyra demanded, and Alicent obeyed, crawling up her body once more. Rhaenyra sat up against the headboard and tangled her fingers in Alicent’s hair and pulled her into a kiss, moaning deep as she tasted her own spend on Alicent’s lips.

Alicent wasn’t surprised she didn’t let her rest on her laurels, even after her powerful, shaking orgasm. Rhaenyra’s grip on her curls grew ever more demanding, pulling to elicit short little gasps and tracing the fingers of her other hand around Alicent’s aching, sensitive nipples.

“You want me, baby?” She asked with a smirk, “Tell me how you want me.”

Alicent groaned, frustrated at being made to speak when Rhaenyra’s hands were turning her brain to slow-moving honey.

“’Nyra,” Alicent whined, trying to rock her hips down to grind on Rhaenyra’s thigh, desperate for anything she could give her. “Need you inside me. Now,” she demanded.

Her soaked cunt slid almost frictionless against Rhaenyra’s leg, painting her skin, until Rhaenyra fisted her hair and held her firm at her hip, preventing her desperate, sloppy little movements and holding her still.

“Will you take my strap, baby? Do you want my cock?” Rhaenyra asked, voice rich and low as she rocked Alicent’s needy cunt against her leg just once.

Alicent moaned, nodding hard. “Yes, fuck,” she agreed.

“You gonna ask nicely for me?” Rhaenyra teased, flashing a grin that was all teeth.

Alicent groaned, “Fuck you.”

“Hmm,” Rhaenyra sighed and rocked Alicent’s hips down once more, giving her just a taste of delicious pressure.

“Ah, fuck,” Alicent moaned, her forehead falling to Rhaenyra’s shoulder. It just took one more slow, controlled roll of her hips into Rhaenyra’s leg to break her resolve.

“Fuck, please,” she begged, “Please, Rhaenyra.”

Rhaenyra’s grin widened at that, the satisfaction of hearing Alicent beg for her and the pleasure of making her curse.

“Of course,” she promised, “anything you want.”

Reluctantly, Alicent rolled off Rhaenyra to allow her to stand. She watched as Rhaenyra crossed to a dresser drawer, unabashedly taking in the sway of her hips and the plush, muscled shape of her ass. Alicent spread her legs and slipped her fingers through her own wet folds, slow and languid, spreading the abundant slick around her messy, needy cunt as she watched Rhaenyra pull on the harness with easy, confident movements and choose a dildo to fit snugly into the O-ring at the front. It was matte black silicone, big but not huge, thick enough that she could tell she’d be feeling it the following day. She shifted her thighs together and pressed her fingers against her clit, mouth watering. Fuck, she wanted it bad. Humiliating.

“Look at you,” Rhaenyra said when she turned, taking in the sight of Alicent splayed on her bed, “Touching yourself, working yourself open. Making your pretty little cunt so needy and ready for me.” Her smile was wolfish.

She walked back to stand beside the bed. “This okay, baby?” Rhaenyra asked, a genuine question, her voice suddenly softer than before.

Alicent nodded vigorously, “Yes, fuck—”

Rhaenyra’s hand fisted her cock, pumping slowly up and down the shaft. “Yeah? You wanna take this for me?”

“Yes,” Alicent said, eyes wide and glistening, “Yes, please. Let me take it.”

She sat up and pulled herself to the edge of the bed, gazing up at Rhaenyra’s eyes, the blue nearly eclipsed by blown pupils. Alicent parted her lips and leaned in to press her mouth to the head of Rhaenyra’s strap. She lay a chaste, delicate kiss there, watching Rhaenyra’s overwrought face through her eyelashes, and then licked up the underside of the shaft from base to tip.

“Alicent—” Rhaenyra moaned her name like a prayer, the hand tangled tight in Alicent’s hair betraying just how affected she was, watching Alicent’s mouth on her.

Alicent took the strap into her mouth then, slipping up and down its length until she couldn’t take any more, feeling it nudge the back of her throat and press firm against her tongue, making her eyes turn glassy and begin to water. She hollowed her cheeks and sucked just to watch Rhaenyra’s expression shatter above her.

Satisfied with her work, Alicent pulled herself off the strap and traced her fingers up and down Rhaenyra’s legs.

“God, what do you do to me?” Rhaenyra muttered as she reached into a bedside drawer to retrieve a bottle and dripped a bit of lube into her palm. She spread it over the strap, slicking it as she twisted her hand up and down its length.

Then she cracked a cheeky grin, one hand still fisting her cock, “Queen of the Willis, innit?” She gave the strap a suggestive stroke to punctuate the joke.

Alicent groaned and rolled her eyes, “I hate you.” She pulled Rhaenyra down on top of her.

“You couldn’t, even when you tried,” Rhaenyra replied with a smirk.

Alicent flipped them over, Rhaenyra letting herself be moved, so that Alicent straddled her hips, the strap pressed against Rhaenyra’s low belly. Slowly, calculatedly, Alicent rolled her hips, dragging her pussy along the shaft, grinding down into it and reveling at how easily she slipped against it. Rhaenyra gripped her hips hard, holding her but not directing her, watching with rapture. Alicent indulged in several more rocks of her hips against the strap, her hands kneading Rhaenyra’s breasts.

When she could wait no longer, Alicent shifted back, taking the strap in her hand and rising up on her knees to position it at her entrance. She gasped as she lowered herself onto it, Rhaenyra’s hands still steady on her hips— not pushing, just holding her. The stretch was delicious. Even with her cunt swallowing just the first few inches, she felt incredibly, beautifully full. She didn’t think Rhaenyra blinked once as she slowly took her cock inch by inch, sliding easily between the lube and her own absolutely dripping wetness.

When she bottomed out, her ass sitting flush with Rhaenyra’s hips she paused, panting, to adjust to the deep stretch, the way Rhaenyra filled her so completely.

“You take me so fucking well,” Rhaenyra breathed, awe and hot arousal evident in her hoarse voice.

Alicent moaned and began to shift her hips, small, slow movements at first, then building until she was rising nearly all the way off the strap before sinking down again. Hot, feverish need took over her body. She moved faster, harder, her moans becoming broken, open-mouthed cries. Her tits bounced as she moved up and down the shaft, nipples pebbled and aching for Rhaenyra’s touch, which she so obligingly gave.

“So good for me, Alicent,” she murmured, “That’s right, ride me just like that. Show me how much you love to bounce on my cock.”

And what could Alicent do but obey? She tipped her head back, pressing her tits forward, further into Rhaenyra’s palms, riding her hard.

“Tell me how much you want me, Alicent,” Rhaenyra commanded, voice low, soft, unwavering, “Tell me how much you need it.”

“I— fuck, I want you—” Alicent’s voice was strangled with pleasure, overcome with her desperation, “Rhaenyra, I need you.”

Rhaenyra gave a low, rumbling moan. She gripped Alicent’s hips harder and began to meet her with firm thrusts.

“Such... a… good… girl,” she said, punctuating each word with another snap of her hips.

Alicent was beyond words, only able to gasp and moan her pleasure, the head of the strap slamming again and again into that perfect spot, making her blind with ecstasy.

Alicent’s thighs shook with effort and roiling pleasure, nearly giving out beneath her. She changed her approach, rolling her hips desperately into Rhaenyra’s, grinding her clit against Rhaenyra’s low belly with each pass, and the base of the strap into Rhaenyra’s clit at the same time. Rhaenyra continued to thrust deep inside her, guiding her hips firmly forward and back to stoke the flames of her building climax.

And then she was coming hard, crying out wordlessly, arching her back as she took Rhaenyra impossibly deeper. Rhaenyra continued to move her along the length of her strap, riding out each wave of her orgasm, even when Alicent’s pleasure left her boneless in her arms.

Alicent came down, shaking and limp. Her muscles screamed and her head was flooded with warm and hazy endorphins. She let herself fall forward against Rhaenyra’s chest, Rhaenyra’s hands carding protectively through her hair and over her heaving back.

With the strap still buried deep inside Alicent, Rhaenyra held her close and rolled them over until Alicent’s back met the sheets. She pressed worshipful kisses up her torso and across her breasts, sucking a nipple into her mouth and lapping at the salty skin.

“You can give me one more, can’t you my sweet girl?” She murmured low in Alicent’s ear.

Alicent made a little cry of protest, her body still on fire from her first orgasm and pulsing with overstimulation. But when Rhaenyra rolled her hips, the ache reignited into molten pleasure. She gave a high, needy moan and nodded.

“That’s my girl,” Rhaenyra pride and possession clear in her tone, “Just lay back and take it for me. Let me make you feel good.”

She grasped the backs of Alicent’s thighs and pressed her legs up to her chest, nearly folding her in half. She pulled Alicent’s hips flush with her again, bottoming out inside her. The new angle had Alicent moaning wantonly, squirming under her as Rhaenyra began to move.

Rhaenyra started slow, filling Alicent with long thrusts. As Alicent’s moans intensified, spilling into a babble of broken pleas, Rhaenrya increased her pace, snapping her hips hard and relentless against Alicent’s ass. The filthy wet sounds of her cunt and the slap of their coliding bodies joined in a symphony that filled the room.

Alicent was rapidly rocketing towards a second peak, pressure building exquisitely in her belly.

“You gonna come for me again, pretty girl?” Rhaenyra cooed, “Such a good girl, let me see you come so hard for me. Give it to me, baby.” She drove the strap into Alicent again and again— benevolent, unforgiving. “Let me hear you come undone just for me.”

She wrapped one arm around Alicent’s leg and pressed her palm heavy against Alicent’s low belly, her thumb slipping between her folds to rub her clit as she fucked her.

“Mine,” Rhaenyra growled, low and almost inaudible like she hadn’t meant to let it pass her lips.

“Yours,” Alicent cried in reply. “’Nyra, fuck—” she was gasping, writhing, “I’m yours, make me yours.”

She came, shaking, trembling, gushing, her cunt spasming hard around Rhaenyra’s cock, crying out her name. Rhaenyra fucked her through it, not stopping until she had drawn the last shining rivulets of pleasure from her. Even then, she stayed buried to the hilt, and pressed soft kisses to Alicent’s brow, to her lips. She let Alicent stay, stuffed full of her strap for a while longer, soothing her feverish skin with her lips and gentle hands.

“Beautiful.”

When she did pull out, Alicent gave a small whine but didn’t move, her fucked-out body sinking into Rhaenyra’s plush bed. Rhaenyra stood to remove the dildo from the harness and slip the harness down her legs, dropping both to the floor to be delt with at a later date.

Then she crawled back into bed and pulled Alicent against her. Alicent wrapped around her easily, her head resting on Rhaenyra’s shoulder, arm draped across her belly, and legs intertwined. Rhaenyra ran her fingers through Alicent’s curls as they lay together in contented silence.

“Will you stay?” Rhaenyra asked softly, voice uncharacteristically uncertain.

“Yes,” Alicent agreed, reaching up to scratch gently at Rhaenyra’s nape, “Yes, I’ll stay.”

*******

Alicent awoke early, as she always did, the soft daylight spilling through the crack in Rhaenyra’s curtains, illuminating the rumpled mess of clothes they’d left on the floor. She was comfortably warm all over, mind and body still sleep-soft and pliant in Rhaenyra’s embrace. They’d shifted in the night, and now Rhaenyra’s body curled around her from behind, one arm outstretched beneath the curve of Alicent’s neck, the other draped over her waist.

Alicent breathed deep, taking in Rhaenyra’s scent from her pillows, her sheets, her slumbering body.

She could slip out, she knew. Rhaenyra had always been a deep sleeper, and the morning sun had only just broken over the tops of the nearby buildings.

Instead, she shifted, turning to face her and tuck her head under Rhaenyra’s chin. Rhaenyra stirred slightly, still mostly asleep, and pulled her closer to her chest. Alicent let her eyes fall closed again, let Rhaenyra’s warmth envelop her, and her soft rhythmic breathing lull her back to sleep.

*******

The audience erupted into a standing ovation as the deep red curtains parted to reveal the cast.

It was Giselle’s closing night.

Alicent felt a genuine smile tug at the corners of her lips, letting the sound of applause merge into a background roar of white noise.

She took Rhaenyra’s hand in hers, and they walked downstage together for their bows. She squeezed Rhaenyra’s hand and felt Rhaenyra squeeze hers back in a steady, comforting reply.

Alicent didn’t know if her father was in the audience. She found it didn’t matter. She leaned in close to Rhaenyra’s ear.

“I love you,” she whispered.

Rhaenyra gave a brilliant grin, just for her. “I love you.”

Hands still joined, they both curtsied low to another swell of resounding applause.