Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Note: An enormous thanks to ElegantPaws, who has done more than you could ever know in order to get this finished, beta'd it, nourished it, and all round generally been a totally awesome human being these last few weeks. I'm pretty sure she was one before, I just got the effect now that's all. :D

They woke together, in the early hours. Eyes blinking open to the dim light of the room, finding each other easily in the dark. Feeling the soft weight of Gwen's breasts against his chest, and her satiny legs entwined with his, satisfied something deep inside of Arthur. For the first time, in too long for him to admit without opening up old wounds that had no place here and now, he felt complete.

Lying in his chamber, with Gwen intimately wrapped about him, Arthur felt the pressures of the days without her lift. The endless training, the eyes of youths he was charged with forging into living weapons, and the knowledge that no amount of training could counter the experience of Cenred's men...he closed his eyes and breathed deep. He wouldn't allow such thoughts to spoil this moment, to taint this temporary sanctuary. Yet they crowded his head, and he cursed himself for allowing them the slightest purchase.

Gwen's fingers drew lazy circles on his chest, and he swallowed, as her finger tips eased the vibrations in his chest. As if understanding that outside forces were encroaching on this sacred space they shared, Gwen shifted onto her stomach beside him, and turned her amber eyes on his, leaning on her elbow to allow her other arm free reign over his torso.

"Tell me." The soft order made him smile. Gwen had a way of seeing him beyond the façade he fashioned to make it through the day. She saw below the bark, and to the fear that instigated it. It was humbling, but also, after the explosive confusion of their earlier reunion, the realisation that she saw all that and cared so deeply anyway...he felt accepted. It was a feeling that imbued him with faith. A faith he had never experienced on such an intimate level with himself before. Still, he stalled with the query, not willing to lose the languorous communion they were experiencing to discuss the outside world and its problems.

"I thought I had shown you pretty explicitly already, Guinevere." He smiled at her, letting his hand trail her lower back, her cool skin soft beneath his coarse finger tips. She moved in closer, and his heart hitched. He could live like this. Not that he had the freedom to make such a choice right now. Perhaps it was selfish, to expect so much for so little in return?

Gwen reached up and dropped a kiss on his heart, looking up from beneath thick lashes. Her lips tickled his chest hair, pressing against his skin.

"Arthur Pendragon, I do believe you are trying to distract me." Her sweet smile and mockingly severe tone soothed him. His hand drifted to her naked rear. His hand spread, and he cupped her close.

"I want this night to be about us, not about my cursed obligations Gwen," he was beseeching, and wondered at how she had such power over him. How she could call forth such honesty.

She pressed fleeting kisses along his torso up toward his throat, lighting a slow burning fire in his groin he would have thought impossible after the intensity of their earlier coupling. Apparently his hunger for her did not diminish but flourish with each new touch.

"You are the summation of all those obligations Arthur," she advised him wisely, even as her tongue teased his jaw. He stretched, letting his hand slip further down her rear, letting his fingers find the warm skin of her inner thighs. Her words filtered through the haze her caresses created. "Let me help you with them. I want to help you."

"I-" He hissed as her tongue found the sensitive spot behind his ear, sending flash currents of lightning through his nerve endings. As her mouth stoked his ardour, her hands strayed south, with devastating effect.

He struggled to form a sentence. "I have many responsibilities at present, some harder to bear than others." He ended on a gasp as her fingers dipped past his belly button, tracing the line of dark hair that led toward his-

"And yet you do, Arthur. You bear them well. Camelot is lucky to have you during these times you know. You do know that of course?" Gwen was playing with him, teasing him into a state of glorious anticipation. He choked out an answer, not sure of that at all, only to be taken by surprise once more.

Gwen swung herself onto him, bracing her hands against the luxurious headboard, her hair tickling his cheeks as she leant forward. Loosening his arms, he settled his hands at her backside, her flesh heating the roughened skin of his palms. He squeezed, tenderly, touched by her fierce determination to convince him of his worth. Her eyes met his in an open moment of communication.

"Arthur, you are not your father. You are the best of him, not the worst."

How had she done that? Cut to the heart of his concerns so cleanly? He kissed her, rising up to meet her mouth in a slow, heated exchange of thanks he had no words for. She kissed back, her lips liquid on his, as their tongues lazily, excruciatingly slowly caressed.

Pleasure prickled his skin all over, causing the hair on his arms and chest to rise as he sighed into the kiss, her mouth increased the pressure in the battle of tongues.

Gwen was taking charge, and he was more than willing to let her. Perhaps she understood his needs better than he, as her breasts teasingly brushed his chest, her nipples pebble hard and achingly tempting. He slid his hands to grip her hips, thrusting upwards as she moved enticingly. She laughed, breaking the kiss with a playful bite to his now swollen lower lip.

"Why is it so hard to give up control, Arthur? Even when it weighs," she whispered kissing his hairline reverently," so heavily upon your head?"

He stilled, feeling knots inside unravel. He had control issues he knew that. Who else could he entrust his men to? Who else would be as committed as he to protect Camelot and its people? No one he trusted would suffice, not even Sir Leon.

No, Arthur knew that he and he alone would go the extra distance for his people. Why would they? It was not their duty after all. It was his, and he took it seriously. He groaned as her lips found his again, and she kissed him from his thoughts, chasing worry away with her passionate insistence. Her soft swollen breasts crushed him as she closed the space between them her hips remained elusively unreachable by his groin. The smooth skin of her abdomen stroked the head of his cock as she moved and he convulsed, instinctively he hauled her backside up his thighs to meet his desire.

She withdrew instantly from the probing kiss and bit his throat in punishment.

He understood the game now.

Gods what an enchanting creature she was, all heat and want and heart breaking insight, laced with discipline.

"Guinevere," he muttered not a warning but a plea, and she kissed him briefly as reward.

Her hands left the headboard to hold his head as she kissed him, drugging him with need. Aware there were rules now, he responded in the only way he knew how, by holding her hips lightly, pulled himself up the bed to a sitting position, finding a way to exert his dominance without taking over, which was both a torment and delight. She nestled into his lap then, her damp, inviting curls rubbing at his shaft, maddeningly slowly. The silky skin of her backside on his coarse thigh hair almost tipped him over. He would snap he was certain of it, his iron clad discipline crumbling beneath her ministrations. Now her hands sat at his shoulders, delicately, when he wanted them to claw at him, expressing a passion as deep as his own. Yet they were soothing instead, stroking lightly, over and over, until the hard edge of his want turned into a languid bubbling river that wound its way through his core.

"Kiss me," she told him, and he was about to complain that he had been, when she lifted herself, and pushed forward, and her nipple brushed his lips. Oh Gods he was lost to this new kind of torture, this slow love making turning his limbs to lead and his wits to ruin.

He opened his mouth to envelop the sweet bud being offered, suckling and licking by turn. Hot lightning lanced through him as she arched her back into his hungry kiss, and he crushed his grip on her hips as they rolled, slipping at his cock as it hardened beyond his endurance.

When a plaintive cry snapped through his intoxicated daze, he gladly found the glistening nipple's twin, letting his thumb stroke the swollen soft nub as he brought the other to the same state. Her tummy skimmed his, her thighs straddling his hips and legs sliding at his thighs as she moved, and Arthur was utterly consumed by the taste of her, the feel of her, the sound of her as her head tipped back and her throat column pulsed with her heart beat by his hair, making his scalp tingle.

If this was giving up control, then he could permit it on occasion he thought foggily, growling as she pulled her breasts away, looking up at her as she decided the next move. He was dimly aware that his desire was stamped on his features, that she held him in her hands, but he was too hard and too hot to be concerned about the shift in power, or what it may mean.

He wanted her to master him; needed her direction, so he could simply be, as pleasure swamped his every cell.

"Tell me what you want, Sire," she whispered, eyes meeting his directly, and he closed his, loving how she so cleverly transformed that hurtful word into a seductive promise; his clever beautiful Gwen.

"You," he confessed, undone by her scent so sweet and her strength so pure. "Always."

With a moan, she leant in and kissed him wildly, her tongue slick and hot as it plundered his mouth, and he fought to hold back, to halt the demands his body was making, as she rolled and stretched and drove him insane. Oh he would pay her back in kind he thought as his muscles strained and heart hammered.

He would teach his Gwen a lesson in endurance too as soon as he was given the chance to...The cry was torn from him like a violent crack of thunder as she slipped onto his erection and held the tip of his shaft within her wet cleft. She silenced him with her mouth, even as she held his shoulders and lowered herself like a glove about him. Lightning pierced him, and sensation shuddered through him, but she was not done with her torture his sweet witch. She held herself aloft as she rode him, never quite allowing their hips to settle, drawing out the ultimate union one delicious slow thrust at a time. His head was spinning and spine wobbling, and he was whimpering her name, but pride had fled the chamber, leaving behind nothing but desire and its expression. Arthur was not a Prince as Gwen finally allowed him to settle fully within her on a gasp of sheer satisfaction, but a man enraptured by the woman he loved.

Eyes snapped open on that thought, he grasped Gwen by the waist and held her to him as he battled the need to come, and she watched him with indolent eyes. Now there was no master, just both of them, moving in harmony as he found a rhythm and she accepted it. She rode him easily, and he felt her climax as it built, saw it even in the gloom of the bed shrouded by curtains, a flush across her skin turning the smooth caramel dewy.

"I love you, Guinevere." A throaty admission of which he had no choice but to share as his patience snapped and his hips bucked harder in the final seconds before he was blinded by his orgasm. It rocked through him like a tidal wave, seeping into every muscle, bone and thought as he wondered if he could feel so spent without dying. It was a moment of bliss sharpened by the knowledge suddenly that he had lain himself bare.

She smiled in response, a smile so wide and sincere that it split him open.

"I love you, Arthur." Then she cried out as she hit the heights too, and his hand skimmed her back, felling her tremors through her skin, even as her words washed through him in the aftermath. The words he had spoken too. The words he realised that did not do justice to his feelings at all, and therefore, were slight a confession, in comparison. Not terrifying at all.

As if reaching her own understanding of what had been spoken, seconds after him, Gwen paused and looked at him, and he was hungry for her all over again, even as she still pulsed about him, and he took the opportunity her hesitation offered, by rolling her over, and pinning her mouth with his.

"Will you wait for me, Gwen?" He demanded in-between kisses, and she nodded her affirmation as her hands linked at his neck, eyes glowing.

"Always."

It was all he wanted to hear.

He woke to a streaky dawn, filtering through the curtains of his bed, rubbing his eyes with one hand as he sat up, reaching across the bed to her with the over. She was gone. His chest crushed beneath the discovery, panic bubbling at the thought it may have been a dream his desperate need had created.

The reality hit as he still held her scent on his skin, and his limbs ached in protest as he went to sit on the side of the bed, his feet swinging to hit the cool floor. It had transpired. As had the confessions they both made. His smile hurt his cheeks, and he touched his face gingerly. He had smiled a lot during the night he surmised with a knowing pride, as had she, his Gwen.

He wondered when she had made her escape, despite his assurances she would be safe till morning, which stung but barely. He had learnt a great deal about her life and its own obligations last night, the battles she fought day to day to keep her position,to rise above the pressures in order to simply survive. If she accepted him for his commitment to his duty, then he must do her the same courtesy he realised, the sting swiftly fading.

A hesitant knock on the door caught his attention, and a quick glance proved he was still naked, so he yanked on a hose and pants before answering, bleary eyed.

Merlin stood there, wearing a grin fit to blind anyone looking.

"Ah, Merlin," Arthur stepped aside, allowing his servant in, his throat raw, no doubt from withholding screams he reasoned as his mind took him back a few hours, then he shook those images away, skin heating in memory. "Bit early to be lurking even for you isn't it?"

"Ah yes,Sire." Merlin's eyes drifted to the bed, and the curtain's still drawn about it, and Arthur bristled. Not that Merlin would ever harm Gwen's reputation but still, even Merlin knowing felt like a betrayal, despite his assistance the night before. "You requested an early morning call if you remember?" Nudge- nudge. Arthur sighed. Merlin veered between impeccable discretion and outright tactlessness at times, an odd combination that annoyed as it did endear.

"Really, Merlin? I don't recall that at all." Arthur wondered to his bed and pulled back the curtains easily, enjoying Merlin's panicked Sire as he span away, so sure of what he would see. As if Arthur would ever risk that! Merlin opened one eye nervously, before sighing as he saw the empty tangled sheets; the very, very tangled sheets. Arthur raise an eyebrow daring him to comment. Merlin wisely held his tongue, though his ears did turn an interesting shade of pink Arthur noted.

"Perhaps I misunderstood Sire," Merlin conceded graciously, and Arthur grinned, before slapping the lanky youth on the back good naturedly.

"Sure you did Merlin, sure you did. Did the other matter you were dealing with last night get resolved satisfactorily?" Arthur still wanted to find that damn maid and throttle her for the damage she had so nearly wreaked, but Merlin nodded confidently.

"Oh yes, all sorted out now. No harm done in the end." Hmm. Arthur wasn't mollified, but had to let it go. He would only cause issues for Gwen if he started berating all the staff that spoke out of turn to her or about her. One day, he knew, she would have the respect she deserved by her peers. One day, she would be the most revered woman in all of Camelot, as she was to him now.

"Excellent. Then you may as well fetch me breakfast, and we'll get this day started. No point wasting day light is there?" Merlin shook his head, and with one last glance at the bed that barely hid his curiosity, he reached the door and opened it, before turning back.

"What would you like for breakfast, Sire?"

"Everything Merlin, I am absolutely famished."

Now Merlin was thoughtful again but before he could speak, Gwen walked past the door, arms full of a basket of flowers, skin glowing and a serene smile on her face.

"Morning Gwen," Merlin smiled at her from Arthur's door, and she paused en-route, turning to him and to Arthur who had all but raced to the door at the sound of her name.

"Good morning, Sire," she curtsied deeply, "morning Merlin." Merlin watched as his friend and master exchanged smiles and coughed awkwardly.

"You're up early, Gwen." He couldn't help it, it was his nature to meddle and needle as required. Besides, after his torrid meeting with Morgana on Gwen's behalf, he felt a certain amount of entitlement too. Gwen turned a careful glance at him, eyebrow raised.

"As are you, Merlin. Gaius requested I pick provisions for his compounds this morning. What's your excuse?" Oh. Merlin found himself under the scrutiny of both Arthur and Gwen, an eerily similar challenge on both faces. He wanted to ask when Gaius had had the opportunity to make such a request, but thought better of it.

"Well, I'm just off to the kitchens. So I suppose we all beat the bell this morning didn't we? Yes, all right then." Merlin made his leave, and glanced back at the end of the corridor, only to witness the skirts of Gwen's dress vanish into Arthur's chambers lightning quick, a flower flying from the basket and landing on the tiled floor. Jogging back, he retrieved the evidence and tucked the errant bloom into his button hole.

He sighed then smiled. Yeah, he may as well take his time on the kitchens. His work load around here had just doubled, he was sure of it.

End