Best Man to wed

Chapter Four

Daenerys woke up reluctantly, an ingrained sense of self-preservation warning her that it was safer to cling to the protective blanket of sleep, that she wouldn't like what she was going to have to face when she opened her eyes and wondered what had happened.
She didn't. The shock of the appalling flashbacks that poured over her in an icy deluge of self knowledge made her sit bolt upright in bed and exclaim out aloud, "No...I couldn't have...I didn't..."
But she knew all too well that she had. The space in the bed next to her where Jon must have slept was now, thankfully, empty.
Where was he? He must have gone down to the conference hall, she decided.
"And you'd better just get yourself up and dressed and ready to face him when he comes back," she warned herself grimly.
Face him! The mere thought of doing so was enough to make her stony churn wildly and her body burn with shamed heat.
Quickly she scrambled out of bed, her body ached slightly in a way that was new and unfamiliar, the self conscious heat  scorching her skin becoming searingly intense as all too vivid and detailed unwanted memories of the way she behaved, the things she had said the previous night returned.
As she stood in the shower she could see where Jon's passion was already begining to bruise her skin.....the passion she had urged him, begged him to show her.
"Noooooo, why did I?" Daenerys moaned, but she knew that she had, and worse, she knew that he must know it too.
"I thought he was Robb," she whispered helplessly in defence of her body's physical treachery, it's undeniable and inescapable, illogical and unbearable sexual response to him.
By the time she was showered and dressed it was almost eight o'clock. She ought to go downstairs and have some breakfast, Daenerys acknowledged, but the last thiy she felt like doing was eating. No, not the last thing, she admitted mercilessly, that was having to see Jon, having to look at him and know what had happened between them, having too....
She tensed as she heard the bedroom door open and saw Jon walk in.
Despite her determination not to do so, she could feel herself starting to flush, her eyes looking everywhere but at him.
"I......I was just on my way down yo breakfast,"She told him untruthfully, hurrying towards the door.
"Not yet. There's something I want to say to you...."
"No!" The speed and vehemence with which she blurted out her panicky denial betrayed her all to clearly, Dany knew, as Jon reached out and took hold of her wrist, swinging her around so that he was standing between her and the door.
"Let me go," she demanded fiercely. "I want you......"
"So you told me......last night," Jon interupted her, watching her mercilessly as the colour came and went from her face and her body stifened as though he had struck her.
"No," she whispered in denial. "That....that wasn't you. I....."
Her whole body trembled as she fought for something to say, some reasonable and logical explanation of what she had done, what she had said, what she had felt. But, finally acknowledge that there was none, she reached desperately and dangerously  for the only thing she had left, picking it up and hurling it at him with all the force of her pent up, tangled emotions.
"What happened last night wasn't.....it didn't....I didn't...I thought you were Chris ....I was dreaming about him and when.....you must have known that I thought you were him," she cried out defensively. "You must have known that I would never.....that...."
She stopped abruptly as she saw the dangerous warning expression on Jon's face, her stomach dropping sickeningly as she realised how angry he was.
"Go on," he invited her softly. "You were saying you thought I was Robb, that you were dreaming about Robb, that you were dreaming about Robb, but you weren't asleep when we made love, were you Dany?
You knew very well who it was, who was holding you..... touching you, pleasuring you," he told her tauntingly, "even if you do claim now that you wanted it to be my brother...."
"I......I believed that you were your brother," Dany lied doggedly, driven into a corner by his refusal to allow her the secure defense she so desperately needed. "I wanted....."
"You wanted me," Jon told her bluntly. "Even if you do prefer to lie to yourself now. You can deceive yourself all you like Dany, but you won't deceive me.....I was the one who...."
"I was pretending that you were Robb," Dany told him frantically, unable to listen to anymore. "I......."
She stopped suddenly as she saw the ominous white line of fury deepen around Jon's mouth, her stomach knotting into tight cords of anxious dread.
"I see.....you pretended I was Robb.....you pretended I was my brother, did you, my cheating little virgin.....?" His eyes dropped to her mouth and then lower, caressing the whole of her body in a hatefully knowing way that made her skin burn as though as the flames of hell were consuming it.
Her body trembled as he drawled, "bit then ofcourse, you aren't a virgin any longer, are you Dany?" And he took her by surprise by roughly jerking her towards him, holding ger by her upper arms, his body so close to her own that she could feel it's angry heat, and she was shaken, driven into a state of shockingly unexpected, aching weakness.
Fighting to deny what her body was frantically trying telling her, deaperate to ignore the tormenting clamour of the need it refused to understand that it couldn't be allowed even to feel, never mind acknowledge or openly demonstrate, she was barely aware of the furious tension in Jon's voice and eyes as he told her savagely,"and I can tell you this much....no matter how much you want to deny it, it was me you wanted last night, Dany, me you begged to hold you and touch you.....to take you and fill you with my body, to......."
"No..." Dany protested shrilly. "No that's not true....I thought you were someone else.....it was Robb I wanted, not you...." She told him piteously.
"That wasn't what you were sayit last night," Jon reminded her brutally. "I want you....I want you..." he mimicked her breathlessly, making her cringe.
"You knew I thought you were Robb," she told him. "You must have done. You know how much I love him. You should have stopped.......Why didn't you?"
"Why? Because I'm a man," he told her callously. "And when a woman makes herself available sexually to a man, comes on to him and begs him the way you were doing with me last night....."
He paused and looked at her then told her grimly, "if your looking for an apology Daenerys, or even a defence, I'm afraid you're not going to get one. I gave you what you asked for. What happened between us last night happened because......"
"Because I believed you were your brother," Dany interupted him passionately.
"No," Jon corrected her mercilessly. "You may have wanted me to be Robb...... needed me to be him.....but you certainly knew that I wasn't. You knew....."
"Stop it. Stop it," Dany demanded. "I don't want to talk about it anymore. I just want to forget that the whole thing happened, " she told him.
"And you think I don't?" Jon challenged her. "You think I like knowing that you used me as a substitute for my brother, that you vented on me all your pent up, virginal frustration at not being able to have him?"
The way he was speaking to her shocked Dany into white faced silence. Jon might, in the past, have been unkind to her, might have been angry with her, but he had never, ever been so sexually explicit with her, nor so...so...
"What nothing to say for yourself ?" he demanded bitingly.
"I.....it wasn't like that," Dany protested, ashenfaced. "You're making it sound as though....as though I was the one....as though it was me who....."
"Well wasn't it?" Jon asked her. "You say you want to forget the whole thing happened. Well, let's just hope that we'll both be allowed to do just that..."
The note of warning in his voice made Dany raise her heat and look at him directly for the first time since he had entered the room.
His eyes were as cold as the artic ocean and just as cruelly destructive.
"What.... what do you mean?"she asked him nervously.
"Use your head Daenerys," Jon advised her grimly. "Last night at your insistence we made......had sex, and surely even you aren't naive enough to have forgotten that there could be...... consequences of our....our Intimacy."
"Consequences..." Dany faltered in a stricken voice as she realised what he meant. "No," she protested in panic. "There couldn't.....we couldn't..."
"Oh yes, there could," Jon corrected her roughly, "and we most certainly did, if my memory serves me right. And while I've never had occasion to put them to test, I have no reason to doubt the efficiency of my reproductive organs and last night they....."
"Stop it. Stop it," Dany begged torturedly covering her face with her hands as she sobbed. "You're just trying to frighten me. I can't be....You can't have....."
She heard Jon laughing savagely at her as she uncovered her face to look at him, his mouth twisted in contempt.
"How modest," he jeered. "You can't even bring yourself to say the words, can you? How modest...how proper...and, my god how inappropriate...... shall I tell you what you said to me last night, what you asked me for?" he demanded mercilessly. "Shall I repeat for you the words you said to me, the way you urged me, begged me to fill you with...."
"No....no..." Dany moaned. "I keep telling you it was a mistake...."
"A mistake?" Jon shook his head. "Oh no, it wasn't a mistake," he told her, "it was your mistake Dany. Your mistake."
He released her so unexpectedly that she staggered slightly, her legs shockingly weak but when Jon would have reached out to steady her she pushed him away angrily, fighting to suppress the tears she desperately needed to cry.
"I don't know how could I ever have believed that you were Robb,"Dany cried out in anguish. "You are nothing like him.... nothing. Robb is kind and gentle, he's....he would never...."
"Never what," Jon interupted her. "Never arouse you the way I did, never make you want him the way you wanted me, never make you feel, experience, know what it really is to be a woman? Is that what you were going to say Dany?"
"No!" She debit vehemently.
"No," Jon agreed crushingly. "You aren't capable of being that honest with yourself, are you? You prefer the delusion of your cosy, pretty, girlish dream. We'll try being more honest with yourself, Dany. Try telling yourself that if you had been in bed with Robb the reason you would have woken up this morning still in your virginally intact state would have been, quite simply, because he didn't want you."
"And you did?" Dany challenged him, desperately trying to use her anger to protect herself from the pain of acknowledging the truth of his words.
"I wanted a woman," Jon told her, "and you made yourself available. I'm not the man to look a gift horse in the mouth."
"You do suprise me," Dany flashed back with heavy sarcasm. "I never thought of you as a man who'd be satisfied with a woman who really wanted another man....."
"Who says I was satisfied?" Jon taunted her. "If you really think that your immature adolescent fumblings  came anywhere near to giving me satisfaction, you've got a hell lot to learn.... only next time don't expect me to do the teaching."
"Don't worry I shan't," Dany told him furiously, but inside her anger was already draining away, leaving her feeling sick and empty and not just shamed by her inexplicable behaviour in bed with Jon, but also vulnerably concious of the sexual inexperience he had mocked her for.
She longed for the ability to make some witty, crushing remark.....but Dany knew she simply didn't have the strength or the energy to find one.
From now on for the rest of her live, she would not be able to look at Jon and not remember what had transpired between them.
"I don't care what it takes or where I have to sleep tonight......I'm not going to share thi bed with you again," she told him angrily.
Thr smile he gave her was as cruel as a hunting Wolf's......a baring of his teeth that made her feel he would like nothing more that to savagely destroy her.
"What's wrong?' he asked her silkily. "Afraid that you might discover that it isn't really Robb you want after all and that your body......"
"No," Dany denied quickly......too quickly? She wondered miserably as she saw the look in Jon's eyes. That wasn't the reason why she didn't want to share that bed with him for a second night, she reassured herself as she made her way down to the conference hall. Ofcourse it wasn't. How could it be?
She knew it was another man she had really wanted, another body she had really yearned and ached for even if..... even though....
She swallowed painfully, unable to deny the unwanted and tormentingly vivid memory she had of looking into Jon's eyes, of knowing who he was and stit wanting, still saying.....
"Hey, are you alright?"
Dany realised that she had actually closed her eyes and walked right into Dario as she heard the concern in the man's voice and opened them to see him looking anxiously at her.
"I'm sorry," she apologized huskily, "I was just thinking about..... something..."
"There is no need to apologise he told her with a charming smile . "I was indeed hoping that I might have the chance to talk with you today......"
"Don't tell me you want my services as a linguistic?" Dany teased, responding to the warmth in his smile and only too glad to have something, someone to take her mind off Jon and the appalling events of the previous night.
"If you do, I certainly shan't believe you" she added "yout English is very good."
"No.... not that," he assured her. "What I wanted to ask you was if you would have dinner with me this evening?"
Have dinner with him? Dany gave him a bewitchingly dazzling smile.
"I'd love to," she told him fervently abd honestly. Anything, she felt, right now she would be greateful for anything and anyone who kept her away from Jon.
"Daenerys if you've quite finished socializing..."
Jon's voice cracked between them like a whip, making Dany spin around guiltily, her nervous,"Jon" causing Dario to look slightly puzzled as be watched her.
"We are here to work," Jon reminded her curtly. "Ivy got a meeting with a consortium of Dornish buyers in fifteen minutes and I'll need you there to translate, and they are several points I need to run through with you first."
"I'll be with you in a moment Jon," Dany told him, trying to stand her ground instead of tamely giving in to the command she had heard in his voice.
She might be his friend and an employee of the company but she was still her own person, still had her rights. Tilting her chin, she looked away from him and back to Dario and told him clearly. "I'd love to have dinner with you tonight Dario. Would eight o'clock be alright ?"
Instead of walking away and giving her the privacy to complete her conversation, Jon had waited for her like a jailer, determined not to let her get away, she decided angrily as she fell into step beside him as they made their way through the crush towards their own stand.
"If it's his bed you're thinking of sharing tonight, Daenerys" Jon warned her cynically as he took hold of her arm  and guided her through the surging throng, "I should warn you that you won't get much privacy, nor much bed space. The hotel management already had to put an extra bed in the room he's booked into as a result of their overbooking.
"How dare you say that?" Dany hissed furiously at him, her face burning. She couldn't bear the way he was making her feel so.....so cheap.....so...."Just because.....just because I.......just because of what happened last night ," she told him in a breathless rush, "that doesn't mean that I'm now going to go to....to have sex with......wirh anyone...."
"Really? You do suprise me....."Jon told her sardonically. "After all if you haven't got the scruples to use one man in place of another, I shouldn't have thought......"
Smack!
Through the tears clouding her eyes,Dany could see the hazy dark red outline of her open handed slap against the lean tautness of Jon's face. She stared at it in shocked, silent horror, unable to believe what she had just done, unable to believe the anger, the lack of self control, the sheer weight of misery and self disgust which had driven her to over react in such a way.
As the cried pressed and surged around them, she was concious only of Jon and the frightening stillness of his body, the icy coldness of his eyes.
"How very predictable and old fashioned of you," he told her softly, atlast. "But I've news for you Daenerys. As an innocent as appallingly  inexperienced virgin you might just.... just have been able to get away with such outdated and sexually stereotyped behaviour, but since you can't any longer lay claim to your mummified virginal state it's time you learned that physical violence from a woman to a man can do a lot more than just get his adrenaline pumping...and that, in the language of sex, it can be a big come on, as much an indication of desire as verbally saying to a man that you want him...."
"No," Dany asserted. Her face felt stiff, wooden, numb, so that it was almost impossible for her lips to form the denial.
"Yes," Jon insisted softly. "Oh yes, Dany.....and before you start making any more denials you might also think about this. Even in the days when it was acceptable for a woman to slap a man's face, it was a weapon she used knowing that it was a two edged sword..... that the man in question may take it as the rebuke she intended but that he might retaliate by assuaging the blow to his pride by inflicting one to hers......."
When he saw the way she was looking at him, Jon's mouth twisted contemptuously,
"Oh come on Dany," he derided her. "Don't tell me you've never read a book or seen a film where the hero retaliates to the heroine's slap by taking hold of her and kissing the breathe out of her......"
"That's just fiction," Dany protested. "And besides you....you aren't a hero....and....."
"Abd you certainly aren't a heroine?" Jon supplied for her. "Maybe you're not, but just try remembering the next time you feel like venting that nasty temper of yours on me, that I'm fully capable of retaliating and I know just how to make you wish to hell that you'd had second thoughts....."
"By kissing me!" Dany scorned, outwardly defiant but inwardly shaking with the tension  and shock of the intense anger she could feel emanating from him. There had been anger between them before, but never anything like this, never anything as dangerous or out of control as the heaviness in the air she could feel vibrating between them now.
"No," Jon told her quietly, shaking his head. "No Dany, not by kissing you but by taking you upstairs and spreading you out beneath me on the bed and....."
"What?" Dany dared to demand hoarsely as she tried to mask her fear. "By raping me?"
The smile he gave her made a violent spasm of tension engulf her body, visibly shaking it while he watched her knowingly.
"Oh no," he told her silkily, "it wouldn't be rape Dany, not with you crying out to me that you wanted me, begging me to touch you, to take you, to......"
She was going to faint Dany decided. She could already feel the coldness invading her body.
"I hate you Jon," she told him through gritted teeth. "I hate you more than before have ever hated anyone else in my life...."
She was desperately tempted to turn and walk away from him, to loose herself in the crowd. However she decided against it. The best way to treat him was with indifference, simply to ignore him, to distance herself completely from him and from what had happened.
***************************************************
"And do how are enjoying the conference?"
Dany made a wry face as Dario smiled at her across the dinner table.
"I too am feeling the same," he told her ruefully, "and wondering if I'm really in the right job. St University I had plans, dreams of being a writer, but in Dorne these days it is not do easy to find a job. My parents....my father......urged me to think of the future...." he gave s small shrug and Dany another smile.
"But it is boring for me to talk about myself....I wish to learn more about you."
"There isn't very much to learn," Dany confessed, while her conscience prodded her, reminding her that there was a good deal more to know than there had been twenty four hours ago, even if it was the kind of knowledge she would never pass on to anyone.
It was fortunate that the Meereen business man whom Jon was dining with had their own interpreter with them, even if it had irritated Dany slightly to see the way Jon had watched the diminutive and very attractive lady and listened to her as she translated his comments to her colleagues.
It seemed Jon had a lot more respect for her and her professional skills than he had for hers, Dany reflected, and that knowledge rankled.
"You look angry," Dario told her. "Have I...."
"I was thinking about something else.... someone else" Dany admitted.
"It is a pity that there has been so much confusion and lack of organization over the conference," he commented.
"Mmmmmm" Dany agreed. "Although I doubt that we would have had much time to enjoy the hotel facilities even if they had been finished."
"This is true," said Dario, then added hesitantly, "I thought of hiring a car and exploring a little of the region tomorrow, I was wondering if you would care to join me ?"
Dany was sorely tempted to agree, just for the relief of getting away from Jon, but despite what Jon seemed to think, she did take her work seriously and she knew if she had been here with Robb or indeed any other member of the company's sales team she would never have even considered using Dario as a means of escaping from them, and so she shook her head, gently refusing his invitation.
"Remember if you should change your mind about joining me on my tour of the region," Dario told ger later in the evening when they had finished dinner, "you only have to say."
"You're very kind," Dany told him honestly.
They had lingered in the dining room longer than most of the other diners , but Dany was nervously aware that she couldn't put off saying goodnight to Dario and returning to her room much longer.
His room was in a different part of the building from hers and when they parted in the foyer, Dany felt her heart start to thud in anxious dread. Would Jon be in the room already? And if he was....?
By the time she had reached their floor, her hands were shaking so much that she could hardly Insert the pass card into the lock, but to her relief, when the door swung open and she stepped into the room, there was no sign of Jon.
She undressed and showered quickly. Once dried band wrapped bin her robe she stood for several minutes on the threshold of the bedroom, staring at the pristine smoothness of the large bed, her heart pounding so heavily and painfully that she automatically put one hand over it to ease the pain it was causing her.
She couldn't sleep in that bed again, she acknowledged, licking her dry lips. She simply couldn't.
Her legs trembled as she walked quickly towards it, her glance drawn repeatedly to the door as she pulled frantically at the heavy duvet, dragging it off the bed and onto the floor. Even doubled over underneath her, the quilt wasn't thick enough to mask fully the hardness of the marble floor, but atleast this way she was signalling unequivocally and loudly to Jon that, despite his goading remarks, she had no desire to endure a repetition of the previous nights events.
But as she lay in the darkness Dany knew that not all of jis cruel taunts were wrong. She had begged him to make love to her. She had responded to him, wanted him.....she had been the one to insist, to demand that what was happening between them be bought to its ultimate conclusion.
She may have wanted it to be Robb, but she knew that he wasn't.  She had known that he was Jon....had known but still had not stopped, had not ceased wanting, needing, aching....
It was impossible for her to understand why it had happened, why she had turned to Jon, responded to Jon, wanted Jon to such an extent that she had knowingly, wantonly and yes deliberately encouraged him....
To what? She asked herself as tears rolled down her face. To have sex with her, to make love to her, to transport her to a place she had not previously known existed, to take her there, and once there to.....?
No, no, no, Dany denied, rolling herself more tightly in her duvet as she tried to stem both her tears and the hot raw ache burning inside her.
It was close to dawn when Dany woke up, her body stiff and aching, one of the pillows she had wrenched from the bed still beneath her head, the other....Hit scarlet colour flooded her skin betrayingly  las she realised she had her arms stay around the pillow ad though....
Quickly she thrust it away from her, at the same time lifting her head to look anxiously towards the bed, praying that Jon was asleep and that he hadn't seen the pathetic way she had cuddled up to the pillow, her tension changing to suprise and then bewilderment D she realised that the bed was completely empty and that Jon wasn't there.
If he hadn't returned to their room.....then where had he spent the night? For some reason she Instantly pictured the pretty Meereen interpreter and the way her silvery laughter had caused Jon to smile in a way he had never smiled at her.
Had they spent the night together? Neither of they had made any effort to conceal the fact that they found one another attractive, Dany acknowledged sourly. She hadn't missed the subtle message in the way she had gently touched Jon's arms to underline some comment she had been making, and she certainly hadn't misinterpreted the sudden gleam in Jon's eyes as he looked back at her, nor the way in which he had moved closer to her.
Well she was welcome to him, Dany told herself fiercely. All she herself wished was that she had known what he was gout to do. That way she could have slept on the bed Instead of on the floor, and instead of waking up with her body aching and her neck stiff, she would hy enjoyed a decent night's sleep.
Yes, the Meereen lady was welcome to Jon.  Dany gave a small shudder. Dud he make it s habbit of sleeping with two different women on consecutive nights? It seemed so out of character.
It gave her a very odd and very unwanted feeling Inside to think of Jon with another woman. Of course it wasn't jealousy she was feeling, Dany comforted herself as she dragged her aching body onto the bed, hauling the duvet with her. How could it be..? She was just thankful Jon wasn't here with her.
And yet as she closed her eyes and tried to go back to sleep, no matter how hard she tried to summon up the comforting mental image of Robb's beloved features, it was Jon's she kept on visualising. Jon his eyes darkening as he lent over her.
"No," Dany denied in growing panic. "No, no, no."