Best Man to wed

Chapter Five

"Ah,Jon. I'm glad to see you again, it was good last night, wasn't it?"
Dany tried not to gape as the Meerenese translator came over to their stand where Jon had been informing Dany that he had some documents he wanted her to translate, the woman's eyes were eloquent with feminine emotion as she reached out any touched Jon's hand.
She might just as well not have been there, Dany decided as she saw the way Jon turned towards the other woman, the way he smiled at her at bent his head protectively towards her.
Dany had been midway through her breakfast when Jon had slid into his seat opposite her, calmly ordering his coffee without giving her any explanation of his overnight absence.
"Very Good." Dany heard Jon agreeing throatily now.
Dany could have sworn that his glance rested just a fraction too long on the other woman's body as she smiled coquettishly at him then announced that she must return to her colleagues....but not before she had leant forward and murmured provocatively to Jon,"I have some free time this afternoon, you did mention that you have a car....."
Dany waited, expecting to hear Jon declare in the curt way she was familiar with that he was too busy to take time off, but to her indignation, instead she heat him responding, "I do indeed. What time exactly will you be free?"
As soon as the woman was out of earshot, Dany couldn't resist reminding him, "I thought you said we had come here to work. In fact I....."
"What's wrong?" Jon Interupted her, not allowing her to finish. "Not jealous, are you?"
"Why shy I be? She's welcome to you. I suppose you were with her last night, were you?"
"And if I was?" Jon countered urbanely. "Is that really any business of yours?"
For some reason that she could not quite define, Dany found his relaxed and almost amused attitude not only infuriating but humiliating as well.
"Yes, as a may of fact it is,"she told him furiously. "You may think nothing of going from bed to bed, woman to woman, of being....I suppose you might even have quite a high opinion of yourself for being some sort of sexual stud...." She added for good measure. "But I'm not promiscuous and I have my health to think about and....."
"Oh, do you indeed?" Jon Interupted her with ominous calm. "Odd that I didn't get the impression that your health was one of your primary concerns the other night," he goaded her bitingly.
Dany shot him a bright eyed look of defiant fury.
"That was beacuse......"she started to defend herself, but Jon would not let ger finish.
"Because you wanted to pretend I was Robb," he finished for her, knowing well by now the way her answer would come out. "Well I have news for you,Dany. When it comes down to it, far from being the untarnished, fantasy figure you seem to think he is, of the two of us I suspect that Robb would toll up the greater number if we have to list our previous bedmates. So in reality the chances of you endangering your "health" as you so coyly put it, would be greater with him than with me."
Dany told him hotly, "I don't believe what you're saying. Robb had never....he would never....heat not like you," she told him flatly. "He would never sleep with someone just for... just for sex."
"I never suggested that he might," Jon corrected her. "I simply said that of the two of us he has probably had the greater number of partners, and for your information Dany, I do not sleep with women "just for sex".......
The look in his eyes warned Dany not to try to take the argument any further, but she wa too wound up , too angry to pay it any attention.
"You did with me," she pointed out recklessly. For a moment she thought she had won and that he wasn't going to reply. After all, what was there that he could honestly say?
She soon found out.
"I....had....sex... with.... you...."he told her coldly, emphasizing each word, so that there was no way she could avoid their impact..... like so many carefully aimed and deliberately fired bullets, she decided as she tried sickly to absorb their spreading pain....."because you wouldn't let me do anything else....."
"You're just saying that to....to punish me," Dany protested, her mouth trembling as she tried to blink away her tears.
"No, Dany, I'm not," Jon denied grimly. "There comes a point where a man....any man..... simply cannot stop. That's a known fact and I can hardly deny it, but way before I could reach that point you were the one who was.....you were the one who wanted....."
"Not you," Dany cut in swiftly. "I didn't want you. I could never want you." She moved away from the stand abruptly....so abruptly that for a moment the hall spun dizzily around her refusing to listen to Jon as he told get to come and sit down, turning on her heel and hurrying, almost running away from him.
How dared he say those things to her, make her feel so cheap, shei he knew....? Well, let him go and spend all day with his new Meerenese woman-friend, let him spend all night with her as well....she only wished he would.
"Dany what is it? What's wrong?"
As Dany looked up into the kind concerned face of Dario, she came to a sudden decision.
"Dario," she told him quickly, "if that offer you made of showing me something of the region is still on, I've changed my mind. I would like to come with you...."
"It would be my pleasure," he told her with s beaming smile. "I will not be free until two o'clock though...."
"That will be fine," Dany assured him. She should have Jon's translation done by then so atleast he wouldn't be able to excuse her of not doing her job. He could not accuse her of anything, she decided fiercely, ignoring the tiny inner voice that warned her that what she was doing was not just extremely dangerous but potentially extremely irresponsible as well.
If Jon could take time off to enjoy himself with his new Meerenese friend, then he was hardly in a position to take her to task for doing something similar, was he? And as for the fact that she would officially be on company time, she would make up the hours she spent with Dario somehow or the other, she told herself grimly, that was one accusation atleast that she would make sure Jon could not throw at her.
It was almost twelve o'clock when Jon came into the bedroom, where Dany was hard at work on the translations which had proved more complex that she had originally thought. He demanded peremptorily, "Have you finished yet, Dany?"
"Almost," she told him, mentally crossing her fingers that when she gave the documents a final read through she wouldn't come across anything she had missed.  She didn't miss the way Jon's frown deepened ad he looked over her shoulder at what she was doing, and she immediately challenged him defensively, "If your not satisfied Jon, or if you think you cout have done any better...."
"If I could, the company wouldn't be employing you as a translator," Jon told her crisply, picking up the work she had completed, adding as he started to read it, "You know Dany there has to be a division between our role of our families being friends and that of employer and employee. You're very found of insisting that you got your job with the company on merit and not by trading on your relationship with my mother, but you don't seem to mind ignoring the fact that I'm your employer and you are still an employee...."
"You're the one doing that, not me," Dany defended her self immediately. "After all if our families were not friends, there's no way you would have been able to force me to share a bedroom with you...."
She could see from his expression that he didn't like what she was saying. Well, tough, she decided. He was the one who had brought the subject up, not her.
"You know your problem, don't you,Jon?"she challenged, swinging around to glower at him. "You're a control freak, but you can't control me. No one controls me...."
"No," Jon agreed drily. "No one does, not even you."
As he looked at her Dany had a vivid memory of the most recent occasion on which she had betrayed her lack of self control, and as she felt the hot tide of colour start to flood up in a giveaway rush under her skin she turned quickly away from him.
"I thought you were supposed to be taking your Meerenese friend out today,"she muttered as she gathered her papers together.
"I am," Jon agreed, looking at his watch as he took the papers from her. "Have you finished now? Is everything here?"
"Yes," Dany confirmed tersely, noting that he was eager to be away.
****************************************************
"More wine?"
Dany smiled as she shook her head, covering her almost empty glass with her hand.
"No I suppose I hadn't better either,"Dario agreed regretfully. "Not as I'm driving."
They had driven through the warm streets of Kingslanding for almost two hours before finally stopping in a small dusty town so pretty that it must have come straight out of a film or picture.
They had explored it like two school children set free from their lessons, buying abd eating delicious home made ice cream, the taste of which made Dany close her eyes in disbelieving bliss.
In had been Dario's suggestion that instead if heading straight back, they equip themselves with food and wine and have an impromptu picnic on the banks of the river they had seen earlier.
"Have we got time?" Dany asked him doubtfully. She wasn't wearing her watch and she hadn't been sure how long they had spent wandering around the town.
"We'll make time,"Dario had told her grandly, and because she was enjoying the relaxation of being away from Jon and of putting to one side all the anger and anxiety that her constant confrontations with him were causing her, Dany had given in and laughingly agreed.
She gas no idea how long they lingered over their alfresco meal, but she guessed from the lengthening shadows that it was growing late.
"We really ought to go," she told Dario reluctantly.
"What if I refuse?" Dario teased her. "What if I say I want to keep you here forever and never take you back?"
Even while she laughed, Dany was unable to stop the sadness shadowing her eyes.
Their afternoon had given her a brief respite, but she knew that there was no real escape from her unhappiness, especially not with someone like Dario, who, nice though he was, was no match for a man like Jon.
Jon....Dany froze. Why should she be connecting her inability to respond to the more Intimate overtures that she knew Dario wanted to make to Jon? Surely it was her love for Robb that stood between her and any other man who might show an interest in her?
"Dany what is it?" Dario asked her hesitantly. "You look so.....so sad....if you have a worry...a problem.....if there is something I can do to help...."
"No. It's.... there's nothing..."Dany denied quickly.
What would Dario say, what would he think if he knew the truth? What would he think of her then? What would get friends....her family....Robb...think of her, if they knew what had happened with Jon? But they would never know, she comforted herself. No one must ever know.
As she stood up and helped Dario clear the remants of the picnic, anxiety like so many sharp knives caused her darting, stabbing flickers of pain that seemed to pierce her heart and she was filled with a sense of shame, bewilderment and confusion.
How could she have been like that with Jon.... wanted him, urged him? Her hands were trembling as she picked up her jacket.
If only there was some way she could wipe the events of that night from her memory and her conscience.....from her's and from Jon's.
It was late, Dany realised once they were back in the car any heading back to the hotel. Later than she had thought, and already growing dark
It was just as well that she had already eaten, she decided as she glanced at the clock on the car's dashboard, because they were certainly going to be too late for dinner.
In the end it was ten o'clock before Dario finally pulled into the hotel car park, a wrong turning had added several extra miles and almost a full hour to their return journey and Dany just hoped that Jon was too  occupied with his Meerenese lady friend to be aware that she had being playing truant.
"Thank you, it's been a lovely afternoon," she told Dario quickly, pulling away from him as he made to put his arm around her.
She could see the disappointment in his eyes but to her relief he didn't try to force the issue, simply falling into step beside her as he escorted her inside the hotel.
Once inside the foyer, Dany searched it anxiously, but fortunately there was no sign of Jon.
"I'm afraid my wrong turning has caused you to miss dinner," Dario apologized, "but perhaps...."
"It's all right Dario," Dany assured him, forestalling him. "I really couldn't eat anything else anyway, not after that delicious picnic."
If she went straight upto her room now, showered and prepared for bed, she could with luck be fast asleep before Jon came in.....if indeed he was planning to spend the night with her and not with....
With her? Dany could feel the angry, self betraying heat burning her skin as she hurried, head defensively down, towards the lifts. Ofcourse she had not meant, that Jon would be spending the with her, merely that he would br spending it in their room. What had he done to her, she wondered resentfully, that she was now having to monitor her own private thoughts?
She walked out of the lift and along the corridor, inserted her pass card into the lock and pushed open the door.
"Where the hell have you been?"
The shock of Jon's unexpected presence in the bedroom caused Dany to stare at him in speechless silence.
"Where have your been Dany?" he repeated.
"I...I....out...." Dany told him unsteadily, alarmed by his fury.
"Out. Out where?" Jon demanded.
"I....Dario....I went out with Dario," she admitted huskily. "He....he had hired a car for the afternoon and he wanted....."
"Spare me the details, I can well imagine exactly what it was he wanted," Jon told her savagely. "Abd to judge from the look of you and the length of time you've been gone, he got it."
"Did you enjoy it,Dany?" he demanded acidly. "Did you beg him? Plead with him?"
Before she knew what she was doing Dany had flown at Jon, raising her hand to bring it down hard against his face, goaded beyond endurance by the hateful things he was saying to her, desperate to make him stop.
But instead of retreating from her, Instead of reacting as she had imagined and recognising how offensive, how unbearable, how unwarranted and undeserved his accusations were, he took hold of her with such speed that she had no time to do anything other than give a small gasp of startled shock as his fingers manacled her wrist and he swung her around in front of him, using hos weight and her vulnerability to tip her over onto the bed.
As he leant over her imprisoning her, Dany cout see the dark flecks in the grey brilliance of his eyes, which when she focused on them, seemed to mesmerise her into a state of shocked numbness. Then she heard him say. "I warned you what would happen if you did that again, Dany."
And he was raising her hands above her head, holding them, shackling them there, his body poised powerfully over hers.
"I know why you're doing this," Dany protested wildly. "You're doing this to punish me because your pride can't bear knowing that I don't want you."
"Is that what you told your Dornish friend ?"Jon snarled at her.
"Dario at I just spent the afternoon together. We didn't..... he's not...."
Dany tensed as she realised her efforts to break free of Jon's constraining hold had caused the soft, full skirt she was wearing to ride up, exposing her thighs.
"Let me go Jon," she begged shakily when she saw the way he was looking at her body. "You don't really want me," she added huskily, "you can't and....."
"Who says I can't?" Jon taunted her softly. "I'm a man Dany, and as any man will tell you, there's nothing quite so erotically stimulating as having a woman tell you she wants you, as having her beg you to fulfill her and satisfy her, as having her cry out to you that she needs you, aches for you....."
"No!" Dany denied in panic. "I didn't mean it....I....you can't do this,Jon. I don't want you....."
"Liar," he told her softly, and as though to prove her self deceit he reached out his free hand and ran it slowly up over her trembling body.
The hard warm feel of his palm against the tense sensitivity of her bare thigh made her quiver from head to foot in what Dany told herself despairingly was outrage and rejection, but long before Jon's hand had smoothed it's way over her waist to lie mockingly just below the smooth curve of her breast she knew that she was lying to herself.
"But I can't want you....."
She hadn't realised she had whispered the shocked words out loud until she heard Jon warning her through gritted teeth, "be careful I don't make you eat those words, Dany, or endure the sexual equivalent, because I promise you, if I do...once I do...."
Dany's whole body shuddered as she realised what he meant, realised and, to her appalled anguish, visibly reacted to that knowledge, not with shock and rejection but with something....some need....she couldn't bear to acknowledge.
"I don't want this,Jon," she told him defiantly, but she knew as he lifted his hand and slowly started to unfasten her top that she was lying, and what was worse, she knew that he knew it too.
Why? Why was her body responding to him like this? She wondered helplessly as he peeled away her top to reveal the warm curves of her breasts.
She tried to will her body not to react to the warmth of Jon's breath as he bent his head towards her.
"No!"
Even as she made the thick guttural denial and twisted her body desperately from side to side, Dany knew shamingly that, far from making her want to be released from the sensual bondage of Jon's mouth's possession of her breast, the deepening and intensifying sensation of that possession as he subdued her attempts to break free of him somehow only increased the erotic effect of his mouth against her body.
Lost in the sensation caused by Jon's mouth slowly savaging the sensitive flesh of her breasts, Dany was unaware of the fact that she gad unfastened and removed her skirt until she felt the sudden coolness of the air conditioning against her bare skin, her only covering the small white triangle of her cotton panties.
Jon still had her hands pinned above her head, and as he released her breast and started to unfasten his shirt, Dany turned her head to avoid looking at him, knowing already what just the thought of the satin heat of his naked skin against her own was doing to her, and as she did so she inadvertently caught sight of her reflection in the mirror on the wall, her body tensing as she stared transfixed at her image, unable to withdraw her gaze.
Was that really her, that creature with the silver, tangled mane of hair, the full swollen mouth whose colour echoed that of her erotically pouting nipples, her skin so creamily pale, so silky and glistening as she kay against the coverlet of the bed, her spine arched, her body spread out like some wanton sensual offering?
Even to her own eyes there was something about her almost voluptuous dishevelment, the disarrangement of her limbs that positively flaunted her sensuality, her sexuality, she recognised in wide eyed shock, the white triangle of her panties somehow more of an enticement than a barrier, her thighs slightly parted as though....as though....
"What are you looking at?" She heard Jon ask as he pulled off his shirt and stepped out of his trousers and leaned towards her, his image joining her's in the mirror, his mouth curling in a smile that made her stomach muscles lock in protest against the wave of shocked excitement it caused her.
"Ah," he said softly, "so you like looking bat yourself, do you, Dany? You like watching while....."
"No!" Dany protested, her face burning as she heard him laugh and saw the way he stretched out his hand and slowly ran his fingertips along her skin, making her shiver and tremble in helpless response.
"Well, remember what I said about making you eat your words," he reminded her softly. "Would you like that,Dany?"he added, so gently that the words slipped up under her guard. "Would you like to know what it feels like to have a man's mouth against your body while he....."
His hand was covering her pussy now, not touching or caressing her, simply lying there, but the weight and heat of it, the knowledge of it, was enough to accelerate the pulse which had been slowly throbbing there ever since he had first taken hold of her.... throbbing bin a deep fierce ache so intense that she felt sure that he must be able to feel the vibrations as they shook her helpless body.
He was naked now, his body darkly powerful in contrast to hers, his skin like the taut, warm pelt of a jungle killer.
The urge within her to reach out and touch it, to touch him was so compelling that Dany couldn't withstand it, her fingers trembling as they came in contact with his body.
The fierce shudder that ripped through him made her stare at him in confused suprise, her eyes staring up into the dark heat of his, her breath coming faster between her half parted lips as her body responded instinctively in its recognition of the arousal of his.
For some reason his arousal shocked her. Shocked her and excited her, she acknowledged, unaware that her eyes were betraying her emotions to him, unaware of anything other than the heat and power of him as he lowered his body against hers and took hold of her, smothering any protests she might have wanted to make.
While bher body shivered her pleasure in his arms, her lips responded to the pressure bof his, parting, opening her mouth drinking in the taste and feel of him.
In the distance Dany could hear a sound...a soft, kneeing cry of desire and urgency that she didn't recognise as hers until Jon lifted his mouth from her's and demanded roughly, "now tell me that you don't want me..... that you want my brother."
"Look Dany," he commanded, one hand cupping the side of her face, turning it so that she was forced to look at her reflection in the mirror....at their reflection in the mirror....at the way that, without knowing she had done so, she had arched herself against him, opened her thighs to accept the weight of one of his between them, to accept it and....
Dany shivered as she saw the way her flesh clung longingly to his, the way her whole body silently betrayed it's yearning need.
"No.....no, this isn't what I want," she protested in a panicky whisper. "This can't be what I want. You aren't what I want....."
As she tried to push Jon away, to reassert her Independence, her determination to reject everything that both he and her body were telling her, she saw anger and another emotion she couldn't define flash like warning darts of fire through the brilliance of his eyes.
"Why are you doing this?" she protested huskily. "You don't want me. You don't even like me. You must want...What happened?" she asked him bitterly. "Did your Meerenese lady friend turn you down after all? Well that's not my fault, so don't try to....to...to take out your frustration on me."
"Why not?" Jon challenged her brutally. "Why shii I use you the way you used me? Exactly the way you used me!"
Dany gasped in shock at the ugliness of his accusation. "That's not fair...it's not...it's not true..."she defended herself. "What happened the other night was a....a mistake," she told him shakily.
"Was it? Well there won't be any mistakes this time," Jon responded mercilessly. "Look into the mirror, Dany," he instructed her again, adding forcefully when she tried to turn her head away. "Look.... and tell me what you see."
Dany's whole body trembled beneath the weight of her emotions. How could she tell him what she saw? How could she shame herself by putting into words what her body was so obviously experiencing....the desire, the need....the sensuality she could see in every taut line of her flesh, every aching curve, every inch of the body she could barely recognise as her own as she was forced to look, witness it's open hunger for the man holding it.
The man holding it.....and that man was Jon. Not Robb but Jon. Jon, whom she could not possibly cerebrally want or desire, whom she did not even like, never mint love.
What had happened to her? She wondered helplessly as she caught back a panicky sob. And why had it happened to her? Why had her own flesh so blatantly turned traitor on her? Why was it....she was so out of control...so...so....
"The other night you told me you wanted me.... begged me to make love to you. This time when you say those words again, there'll be no taking them back, Dany, no pretence that you'll think that I am Robb. This time both of us know just exactly who it is you're crying out for."
Was that why he was doing this to her? Dany wondered achingly. Because his pride couldn't stomach the thought that a woman....any woman, but most especially a woman whom, after all he had made it clear he despised so absolutely and completely.... should dare to prefer another man? Was this then, male pride, male anger, male desire, male power generated and fed by some testosterone fuelled need to be first, to be the best?
"Say it again Dany," she heard Jon demanding softly as his mouth started to caress her throat in what she knew was a slow and deliberate assualt to her defences. "Tell me you want me....."
"No!" Dany refused stubbornly, panicked by the thought of losing control, by the knowledge that what he was doing could all too easily make her loose control.
She felt her whole body shudder as his mouth burn paths of fire down over it. In the mirror she could see her tortured twisting and turning as she tried to evade his lips and hands, but already her denials and her movements possessed a slow, drugged quality that made them sound and look more like some subtle form of enticement than genuine rejection.
There was something about the sight of Jon leaning over her, half stradling her, something about the sheer, naked power of his body that sent waves of heat blistering through her, that made the hands she knew she had reached out to fend him off somehow seek to draw his closer Instead.
When she felt the warmth of his mouth caressing her stomach, she cried out to him to stop, but his hands were already sliding her panties free of her body, and although she fought desperately not to look at the sight of his dark head against the pale silkiness of her thighs caused such a fierce spasm if sensation within her that her whole body visibly jerked.
"No don't.... please don't," she whispered protestingly, but his hands were already holding her, lifting her, his lips stroking the soft, vulnerable flesh on the Inside of her thighs, his palms resting against her pussy, touching it.... making it...her tremble in a paroxysm of combined anxiety and pleasure.
Even though she gat known what was going to happen, how he was going to punish her and exact full payment for her defiance, her denial, and even though she had thought she had prepared her body so that she could defend herself from it, the shock of his mouth actually moving against the most Intimate part of her..... and her reaction to it..... caused her to cry out helplessly to him that she couldn't bear such pleasure, that she was afraid of what he was going to do to her, of what she was feeling.
"Jon....Jon...."
She heard herself call his name as her body exploded in violent spasms of intense pleasure and knew she was babbling incoherently to him as he moved over her and took her in his arms, kissing her breasts and then her mouth with the taste of her still on his lips.
"Jon....ahhh Jon...."
Her body was still quivering, still empty...still aching for him, she recognised in breathless wonder.
"Say it," he demanded against her mouth.
"Say the words,Dany...."
"I want you," she told him helplessly. "I want you.... only you...."
The words became a dizzy cry reinforcing each thrust of his body within hers.....a meaningless litany to accompany the waves of pleasure and need that were buliding higher and higher.
Dany heard herself cry out his name again as the pleasure finally crested, her body damp and weak.... drained of life and energy as she clung to him in the aftermath of her passion. In the mirror she could still see their reflection, their bodies entwined. She could feel the tears sliding helplessly down her face. What had she done? What had she become? She no longer recognised herself in the person she now seemed to be and that made her feel more desperately afraid than she had ever felt in her whole life.
It was only as she finally slid into an exhausted sleep that she realised that she had barely thought of Robb since she had walked into the bedroom and seen Jon.
Because she couldn't bear to think of Robb and the purity of her love for him after what she had done..... after what Jon had made her do, she told herself numbly as sleep finally claimed her.