Lyonel woke to the slow rhythm of your breathing beside him, each exhale a soft brush against the crook of his arm where you'd curled into him sometime in the small hours.
He did not move at first. He simply lay there, a great sprawl of muscle and warmth under the tangled furs, watching the rise and fall of your shoulder beneath the sheet that had slipped low during the night. His hand, rested open on the mattress between you, fingers twitching once as if debating whether to reach out or let the moment stretch.
A grin cracked his face before he could stop it, wide and foolish, the same one he'd worn when you'd first laughed at one of his jests years ago in some torchlit hall, before betrothals or crowns or any of this weight had settled on either of you. Last night had been no tourney, no clash of steel and bravado. Last night had been you; your hands in his hair, your mouth tasting of summerwine and nervous courage, the way you'd whispered his name when the bed curtains finally closed behind the last giggling maids and drunken uncles.
The Laughing Storm, they called him. Swaggering giant. Finest fighter of his day. Yet here he was, heart hammering like a green boy's, because you'd chosen him. Not the title, just him: Lyonel, who still sometimes woke expecting the world to laugh back.
He shifted carefully, the mattress creaking under his weight. The chamber smelled of cedar smoke from the dying hearth, crushed lavender from the linens, and the warm musk of your joined bodies. He leaned over you, black hair falling forward to brush your cheek, and pressed his lips to the soft skin behind your ear.
You stirred, a small sound escaping you. "Shh, love," he murmured, voice rough with sleep. Another kiss, this one to the curve of your neck where your pulse fluttered like a trapped bird. "Go back if you want. Just... let me taste the moment."
He couldn't stop. The kisses came deliberate, mapping territory he'd only just been granted full rights to explore. The corner of your jaw. The hollow of your throat. The delicate ridge of your collarbone that rose with each breath.
A laugh bubbled up in his chest—low at first, then freer, the deep, rolling sound that had once made lesser knights blanch on the lists. He buried his face against your shoulder, shoulders shaking. You murmured something incoherent, lashes fluttering.
He lifted his head just enough to see your face; sleep-mussed, lips parted, eyes still heavy with dreams. Beautiful in a way that stole the air from his lungs. His grin widened until it hurt.
"Morning, wife," he said, the word tasting like victory on his tongue. He kissed the tip of your nose, then your forehead, then hovered there, breathing you in. "My fierce little storm. Gods, you snore like a kitten when you're knackered."
He felt the shift in you—the slow awareness blooming behind your eyelids, the way your body softened further into the mattress as memory caught up. Your hand lifted, sleepy fingers finding the thick muscle of his arm, tracing the scar there from some long-ago melee.
Lyonel caught your wrist gently, brought your palm to his mouth and kissed the center of it. "You wrecked me last night, you know that? Proper ruined. Can't even think straight."