Quick pronunciation guide just in case.
Gwyn = G-win
Iowreth = yor-weth
Dwynwen = Dwin-when
...
He'd known what it was to kill a man.
He could still feel the echo of how it felt to push into the resistance of his enemy, the necessity to twist the blade before the suction of cleaved flesh held it, leaving him vulnerable.
Gwyn ap Iorwerth had killed more men than the years he had lived.
Two score English bastards had fallen to his stab or swipe during his meagre 18 years roaming the Welsh mountains, defending his land from the invaders.
But he had never faced an enemy quite like this before. No never like this.
She stood opposite him, eyes cast downward, arms open in display.
She had been waiting for him in his chambers, wearing only the lace linen over shirt that fell to her thighs and the pendant he had gifted to her at the wedding.
Of the same years, and promised to him since before his protracted four year campaign to the borders she now met him as his wife.
He had stayed true to his betrothed, even tho he could barely remember her face from the brief meeting when they were fourteen and she had been bargained as a coin to unite the Iowreths and Dwynwens.
And now here they stood, facing each other across the battlefield of his quarters, lit only by the flickering of the fire in its hearth, and the candle light that stroked her body. The dancing light cast shadow and light across a human form unfamiliar to him in all his years of taking them apart.
War had made him strong. A large man for his age, his youthful face belied the horrors seen and inflicted by the now scarred and bulky body.
But for all his strength,he felt a fear in his heart unlike any he had faced across the battlefields where he had wreaked his carnage.
When at war he knew his duty was to ride or run as hard as he could, stab, and swing duck and strike. The art of killing came naturally, but this, this was the art of love and he stood vulnerable to being struck down.
Rhiannon Dwynwen stood a head and a half under him but only a sword strike away.
The freckled face he had been reintroduced to, just a feast time earlier, pained him in a way previously unimaginable.
She took his breath as a hammer to the belly would have.
He could not bring his eyes from the hazel pools of hers, they pinned him as sure as any lance.
His heart felt a wound only comparable to the arrow he had once had to twist from his thigh.
He was open and vulnerable, naked of his armour that had become part of him as much as his skin. And there she stood opposed in the firelight.
The thin material of her long undershirt was all that stood between him and true nakedness he had never felt in the presence of anyone.
When the veil had been lifted at the joining, and he had seen her face for the first time as a man, he had felt a stirring in his loins such as he had never before.
As she stands before him now, her hazel eyes are framed by her auburn hair, braided and beflowered, her delicate nose sits above arched bowed lips, and her whole visage is spattered with freckles more beautiful than the stars in the sky, they cascaded in a constellation down her neck and across her shoulders.
" My Lord, would you wish me to come to you?" Rhiannon said, breaking a pregnant silence as they stared into each other.
She lowered her eyes once more, down to the animal skin rugs that covered the thick oak floorboards, waiting for a response.
"Yes girl, come to me." He answered in a gruff and low voice.
He had never taken a single step backwards in the face of a charge in all the years of his life, but never had he been closer than in this moment as she advanced on him.
She halted a mere breath away, and level to his chest.
"May I remove your clothing, my Lord?"
She asked in a tiny voice.
Gwyn felt her tremble through the air between them so he gripped her shoulders lightly to control them.
"Is this what you want? " He breathed
