The Grand Duchess’s bathroom was thick with pale steam. A faint herbal scent drifted up from the heated water, and faint droplets glistened across the marble floor.

Attendants moved busily around the wide bathtub.

Luna lay half-submerged in the warm water, blinking slowly. The maids’ hands were unusually attentive today.

“It may be a little hot.”

An older attendant spoke carefully as she placed a steaming cloth fragrant with medicinal herbs over Luna’s lower abdomen.

“Ngh……”

The cloth was far hotter than Luna had expected. But it wasn’t enough to pull away, so she bore it without complaint. The warmth slowly melting through her body made her limbs feel languid without her even realizing it.

The attendants replaced the pouch of medicinal herbs in the bath with practiced hands.

Before long, the scent of mugwort and herbs rose more thickly.

“It’s so hot……”

“You must bear it a little longer, Your Highness.”

As the steam rising from the bathwater wrapped around Luna’s skin, the attendants carefully combed out even the ends of her hair and slowly poured scented water over her.

Their touch was that of someone handling a rare and precious piece of porcelain.

Some time later, when the treatment to warm her lower abdomen was entirely finished, the attendants gently guided her out of the bathtub.

But the long process was still not over. She was carefully laid down on a soft cloth, and a clear fragrant oil began to be applied to her body.

Each time the warmed oil slid across her flawless white skin, a gentle heat spread in its wake.

Luna slowly opened her eyes at a familiar scent.

“This is……”

“Musk. It has a very sweet fragrance.”

The reason Luna recognized this scent was none other than the fact that it was the same one that had been applied on her first night with Caesar.

That night too, she had been led through a long preparation by many hands. Dressed and adorned with care from head to toe, she had made her way to the bridal chamber with a trembling heart.

The memory of that night’s heat, Caesar’s low, subdued voice, and a first night that had turned to pleasure against all her worries drifted through her mind, and strangely, her body began to feel warm.

It felt almost as though she had truly returned to that night.

“Would you raise your arm for a moment?”

Guided by the attendants’ hands, Luna slowly sat up and moved her body as they directed. Before long, a thin, gossamer cloth flowed softly down over her now perfectly dried skin.

It was a negligee as light as down.

It was so sheer it was almost embarrassing to call it clothing at all, reflecting every line of her body. The full curve of her silhouette showed through clearly beneath the thin fabric clinging to her skin.

“W, wait… why suddenly something like this……”

Luna asked with a flustered expression, but the maids simply continued their final touches in silence.

When the preparations were all complete, the bedchamber attendant looked at Luna with a satisfied little smile.

“You look truly beautiful, Your Highness.”

Luna in the mirror. Or rather, Adelia, was truly beautiful.

Whether it was the lingering musk in the air or the heat of the bathroom that had yet to dissipate, somehow that warmth seemed to color even her chest.

Luna touched her flushed cheeks absently with her fingertips.

The reflection in the mirror looked unfamiliar and embarrassing, and she covered herself awkwardly as she opened her mouth to speak.

“Then at least a robe……”

Just then.

Click―

The door opened, and the attendants all bowed their heads at once. As though they had been waiting for exactly this moment, they quietly withdrew.

And through the open door, Caesar appeared.

The moment he entered, Luna hurriedly tried to cover herself with both arms, but it was no use.

The sheer fabric did nothing to conceal the lines of her body; if anything, it made them all the more vivid.

To face him looking like this. Her face flared hot in an instant.

“Wh, what brings you here all of a sudden……”

Caesar didn’t answer. He looked at her steadily for a moment.

His deep gaze lingered slowly over the line of her throat beneath her still-damp hair, and over her flushed face.

Then he walked toward her at an unhurried pace and said, “Physician Demian said it would be fine to resume relations. That the Grand Duchess’s body is sufficiently prepared.”

Demian said that?

He had clearly said she still needed to take better care of her body, that she needed to rest for the time being… and there had been nothing of the sort even this morning.

A brief question passed through her mind, but Caesar was not the kind of person to prepare something like this without reason. Without knowing the full details, Luna had no choice but to take his word for it.

“Oh… so that’s why……”

The moment she became conscious of him, Luna swallowed dryly for no real reason.

Caesar looked unusually masculine today.

Beneath his loosely draped robe, the firm line of his throat and the sharp definition of his Adam’s apple were visible. A droplet from the ends of his damp hair fell and slowly traced down his smooth skin.

Her gaze followed the droplet naturally downward.

“…Do you not want to?”

She looked up sharply and their eyes met, and Luna startled and quickly looked away.

“Th, that’s not it……”

But what came next was the problem.

Below the sash cinched at the waist of Caesar’s generous robe, the fabric was already straining, as though unable to conceal the desire he had been holding back all this time.

Of all places to look away to.

She tried to look somewhere else in her embarrassment, but it wasn’t easy. Her eyes wandered through the air, unable to find a place to settle.

On top of that, a familiar and pleasant scent drifted faintly from Caesar. He had clearly prepared himself for tonight as well.

The scent made her stomach stir in a strange way.

The silver-grey eyes gleaming in the candlelight were cold and beautiful as diamonds, but the gaze within them felt strangely, inexplicably hot.

Caesar’s throat moved slowly as he watched her hesitate, and a pleasing low voice came quietly from his lips.

“I’ve been waiting for this day.”

With those words, Caesar’s hand gently took hold of her chin. Before she could draw even a short breath, their lips met.

“Mmh……”

It was a hot, deep kiss.

Luna squeezed her eyes shut and instinctively gripped the front of his robe. Between their pressed lips, hot tongues and soft flesh moved against each other without restraint.

The deeper their breaths tangled together, the more the tension soaked through her body seemed to slowly melt away. Caesar parted her lips wider, sharing breath and warmth as he drove her on without pause.

His scent, his heat, the low sound of his breathing all blurred together until her head swam.

A dizzying, pleasurable vertigo clouded her thoughts.

Before she knew it, Luna had been laid back on the soft bed, her still-damp hair spreading across the white sheets. Caesar looked down at her and slowly untied the sash of his robe.

Shhhk.

The heavy robe slid to the floor with a low, weighted sound.

The body Caesar revealed beneath the moonlight was overwhelming enough to steal the breath, and Luna’s eyes went wide.

Broad, powerfully built shoulders and taut, defined chest muscles. Deeply carved abdominals, as though chiseled with precision.

Below that, his c*ck, swollen to the base, bobbed with pre-c*m already beading at the tip, its sheer presence impossible to ignore.

To think something that large had been inside her.

If anything, it looked even bigger than before. The visual impact of Caesar’s massive c*ck left Luna stunned and unable to look away.

Indifferent to her state, Caesar stripped away the negligee that barely covered her and ran his gaze slowly over her body.

“Spread your legs and touch yourself where it feels good.”

“What? Wh, what do you……”

“The physician instructed it. He said that to facilitate conception, a woman’s arousal needs to be drawn out to release her tension. That her natural lubrication would make the act itself go more smoothly.”

“D, did Demian really… say that?”

Caesar looked down at her slowly, like a hungry predator.

“Yes. If you truly don’t believe me, you’re welcome to ask him yourself.”

There was no way she could ask him. No way she could actually say those words out loud. How could she possibly ask whether he had really told Caesar to have her spread her legs and touch herself?

Luna looked up at Caesar in a breathless, suffocating tension.

She had the fleeting sensation that she might be swallowed whole by that dark gaze at any moment.

Her heart pounded and raced. After hesitating for a long while, she finally slowly let the tension leave her knees.

It was shameful, and yet her face burned hot.

That only made her more aroused. Luna began to part her legs slowly, very slowly, like someone moving in a trance.