But Andrea snatched that hand too and muttered something incomprehensible.

“Don’t. If you’re going to touch me from now on, do it knowing what it means.”

“……Pardon?”

The meaning of his words reached her a beat late, and her mind went blank for a moment.

A slow warmth crept up to both her cheeks.

This is exactly what a jealous man looks like.

He hasn’t been drinking, he’s not sick, and yet he’s acting like this…… this can only be jealousy.

That was what her instincts told her.

For a brief moment, Riley blinked and turned it over in her mind.

Why.

Why was he acting like someone who had feelings for her, like someone who had misread the situation with Parnelli and was consumed by jealousy?

She had never seen him like this before, eyes blazing, unable to contain himself.

He had been perfectly composed even when removing his greatest political enemy, Queen Fabienne, and yet right now he was acting like a man backed into a corner……

Riley could not help asking, with a show of innocence.

“Do you have feelings for me?”

A very Riley question. Andrea went rigid, as though something had struck his spine. But then, as though surrendering, the wavering in his eyes hardened into resolve.

“Yes.”

The answer came too easily, and Riley could only blink.

For a moment, only the sound of their unsteady breathing mingled with the loud rain outside.

Then she finally opened her mouth again.

“Why? Since when?”

She asked because she genuinely wanted to know, her heart beginning to beat a little faster.

“And you mean it?”

At her rapid-fire questions, Andrea opened eyes he had been squeezing shut, dragged a palm roughly across his jaw, and answered.

“Why, I don’t know. I just think you’re adorable.”

The moment those words were out, both their faces went red at exactly the same time.

A crack of thunder and lightning outside lit up the room just then, making their flushed faces fully visible to each other.

“Y, you think I’m adorable?”

The guileless way Riley sought confirmation pushed Andrea, already cornered, into full surrender.

It was a small mercy that the roar of the downpour outside smoothed over the awkward silence inside.

Andrea pressed a hand to his forehead, let out a sigh, and finally admitted it.

“……Yes. Adorable. I noticed you from when you were still Raul. You were just as adorable then. No, to be more precise……”

He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence, and Riley took a step closer as though to press him.

The positions of aggressor and defender had quietly reversed.

Riley clasped her hands together and looked up at him with bright, shining eyes. The embarrassment seemed to have been entirely overtaken by curiosity and excitement.

“Since when exactly, hmm?”

Andrea looked down at Riley, who was staring at him with eyes full of a thousand feelings.

She always had this strange boldness in the most unexpected places.

In the end, he had no choice but to confess, feeling very much like a criminal making a statement before a detective.

“It, it was when you started…… touching my body…… in that strange way at some point…… that’s when I started to feel……”

He could not even finish the last sentence, and yet Riley’s face only grew brighter with curiosity.

She was genuinely puzzled.

She had touched his muscles more than usual to draw them with greater accuracy for the n*de portraits, and he had taken that differently?

“You started to feel…… feel what?”

She knew she should not ask something so forward, but Riley could not help herself.

Her heart was pounding, and this moment tasted just a little sweet.

So she stepped one more step toward him without thinking and asked.

“But, but you thought Raul was a man…… and you still developed feelings like that?”

Something about the pleased note in Riley’s question seemed to aggrieve him, and Andrea snapped.

“Yes! I did! I’m not gay, but I liked ‘Raul.’ My body must have known instinctively. That the other person was a woman!”

He added quickly.

“And of course, finding out you were a woman and liking you even more confirmed I’m definitely not gay! But you……!”

Andrea, who had been shouting, ground his teeth.

The handsome face of the Royal Arts Institute director, arguing with Riley at the doorway and making some kind of appeal just moments ago, had surfaced in his mind. It had looked exactly like a lovers’ quarrel.

Andrea felt the blood pounding at his temples and squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them.

And finally he spat it all out.

“And yet here you are, having lovers’ quarrels with that pretty-faced married director of yours, so I……”

Riley studied Andrea’s face carefully, jaw clenched.

She found it remarkable to watch emotions tinged with jealousy flickering openly across a face that was always so arrogant and composed.

It was strange enough that he had noticed her even when he thought she was a man, but to lose his composure like this, unable to hold back his jealousy……!

Even so, she had always known he treated her differently from others, so she did not doubt the sincerity of his feelings.

She just had not known it ran this deep……

Jealous over her, of all things……

This is strange…… but good heavens…… he’s so adorable!

Romance novels said that once someone started looking adorable to you, it was all over, and right now Andrea looked many times more endearing to Riley than he ever had as her proud and magnificent employer.

So she decided, without quite meaning to, that it was time to come clean.

“Parnelli and I are not like that. He’s my biological father.”

A few seconds of silence followed the gentle, matter-of-fact reply.

Then Andrea’s eyebrow twisted, as though he had not yet processed what he had heard.

“What……?”

Slowly, confusion spread across his face.

“Is that true? That man is your biological father?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

Riley nodded, looking at the bewildered Andrea with clear, unclouded eyes.

He stared at her blankly, then pushed back the hair still dripping water down his forehead and wore an expression caught somewhere between understanding and disbelief.

Then, as though something had just struck him, or as though he had taken a small shock, he began to study Riley’s face carefully.

They look alike.

Andrea realized that Riley and Parnelli resembled each other.

He had felt a vague similarity in their atmosphere and been jealous that they looked well together standing side by side, but he had never noticed until now that their features were alike.

Watching Andrea’s taut, fierce expression crumble into something like hollow relief, Riley decided she could not hold back any longer.

Even those slightly parted handsome lips were unbearably endearing.

Oh, he’s so adorable.

Without thinking, she grabbed Andrea’s tie and pulled, and when he came forward without resistance, she pressed her lips softly against his.

Peck.

Soft lips pressed gently and pulled away.

Where had that courage come from? But in that moment everything felt natural, and her lofty employer looked nothing but adorable, and Riley giggled.

She looked up to find Andrea frozen, as though in shock.

Worried she had crossed a line, Riley flinched and reached for a nearby towel, seeing the raindrops still falling from the line of his face.

But her wrist was caught in midair, and her whole body was pulled flush against Andrea’s chest.

Riley let out a small cry and opened her eyes wide.

Andrea’s gaze, looking down at her, was blazing, and despite being soaked through, his body was burning hot. She almost imagined steam rising from around his shoulders.

“Y, Your Highness?”

The moment Riley called his name, Andrea tilted his head and parted her lips with his.

He cupped the back of her small head in one large hand and pressed into her, unhurried and unrestrained.

Hot, damp flesh moved slowly against hers, and Riley, who had been staring wide-eyed, closed her eyes as he pushed deeper, parting the soft warmth inside her.

It felt like hot chocolate melting on her tongue, like sweet fresh strawberry cream dissolving.

The more their tongues tangled and their breath mingled, the more her head swam and the harder it became to breathe.

Through the solid press of their chests, she could feel Andrea’s heart pounding hard and fierce.

Like a beast that had gone too long without, he could not restrain himself. He held Riley’s slender waist tight and lost himself in the softness of her. The taste of her small, yielding tongue and the sweetness of her was too much to stop.

A strange heat finally bloomed through her entire body, and a dull ache began to build low in her abdomen.

The more their wet tongues tangled, the more the solid weight of Andrea’s chest pressed heavily against hers, the weaker her legs became.