With her head tilted back completely, receiving him, Riley squirmed as her breath was cut off. The unfamiliar feeling and sensation was intoxicating, but a little frightening too.

Andrea pulled back briefly and breathed hot against her ear, and she let out a small, helpless whimper without meaning to.

Stirred by that sound, Andrea began pressing soft, pecking kisses to her lips again.

Riley, who had been leaning back, tumbled onto the sofa, and Andrea came down over her.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Riley rested her chin in her hand and stared blankly out the window, then let out a sigh.

The events of a few days ago kept coming back to her.

“Hmm……”

She chewed on the end of her pencil and murmured.

“What am I supposed to do now?”

The memory had not left her mind for a single moment.

The kiss, as impulsive as it was deep. The strange, heady caresses that followed.

Far more intoxicating and overwhelming than anything she had imagined while drawing Captain Alain, which left her thoroughly flustered. To think that just kissing could set her whole body on fire like that.

It had felt like being plunged into some warm, pleasant swamp and pulled back out.

If anything, the one who had managed to hold onto the last thread of reason had been Andrea, and Riley had been a little disappointed that day.

More than a little.

The feeling of hot, damp skin pressing and moving against hers had been so dizzying.

The breadth and solidity of Andrea’s arms around her had been so overwhelming.

The warmth and heartbeat that had come through his wet shirt still felt vivid and present.

In that moment, the two of them seemed to have forgotten entirely that they had spent years as master and servant, and that barely minutes had passed since their confessions.

Every time Riley recalled those events from a few days ago, she felt the heat rise to her cheeks and let out a long string of sighs.

“Huff, but that’s not the problem.”

Right.

The problem was that since that day, Andrea had been overstepping.

‘Marry me, Riley.’

As soon as possible.

“……”

Skipping over everything and going straight to marriage.

She had never once thought about marriage. And to His Highness, of all people?

Honestly, her true feelings were that since they had confirmed their feelings for each other, however impulsively, she wanted to date first.

Drawing illustrations for all those romance novels had given Riley a certain anticipation and curiosity about the private affairs of lovers.

She had wanted to love freely, at least in the way Captain Alain did, though not with multiple people at once. She had wanted to try all those pleasurable, secret things together.

And yet, marriage out of nowhere!

Was that even realistic?

She was nothing more than an illegitimate child of a bankrupt viscountcy, and had spent her life working as a palace attendant. He was being completely impractical.

Saying ‘I didn’t raise you to think like that’ would not apply, since Andrea was older than her and far more experienced in the ways of the world.

If anything, she was the one who had grown up inside Eli Palace, living under his protection.

“Huff……”

So Riley decided to think of this as a brief, temporary detour.

A romance with His Highness would end someday, perhaps not even a full season from now, but was it not worth living true to her feelings in the present?

“Hmm……”

Come to think of it, it had been thrilling.

Riley closed her eyes and tried to bring back the sensations of that day.

Every time Andrea pressed his lips to her nape, her collarbone, the upper curve of her chest, it had felt like electricity running through her whole body. The strange sensation that rose from the soft skin behind her ears, and the ache that had built so insistently low in her abdomen.

The dizzying feeling when her flushed chest was pressed heavily against his.

She found herself wondering what it would feel like to have all of him.

She had admired the view many times before, but being held against that magnificent body was an entirely different matter.

Her mind had gone white, and she had nearly been drunk on the weight of his warmth.

It was a little ridiculous to be having such thoughts right after a confession, but with the most handsome man in the kingdom right in front of her, was it really so unreasonable?

Either way, the sensations stirred in Riley that day had awakened a mischievous curiosity that had been lying dormant inside her.

She had already been suppressing a certain inner indecency that had been building while drawing Captain Alain’s illustrations, and now it had been poked awake.

She rested her chin in both hands and murmured without thinking.

“I want to be in a relationship. A very, very passionate one.”

Riley giggled with an innocent face, then buried her reddening cheeks in her arms.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Unaware of the bold thoughts Riley was entertaining, Andrea held out a large bouquet of flowers.

“Miss Riley, I shall try again today. Will you marry me?”

“……”

His platinum hair was swept elegantly to one side, clearly tended by someone, and Andrea stood there once again at the absolute peak of his looks and masculine appeal.

But he kept saying these impractical things…… what on earth was he thinking.

Riley buried her nose in the bouquet and made a show of sniffing it, using the gesture to dodge giving an answer.

Her head was already buzzing with improper curiosity and unfamiliar desire from the unfinished business of that day……

What is all this marriage talk……

She felt a quiet resolve settle inside her that she was going to experience everything with Andrea, one way or another.

The more she thought about it, the more the anticipation grew.

She wanted to shout ‘forget marriage, let’s just kiss!’ but Riley bit her lip and held it in.

Instead, she took his hand and guided him to sit beside her, and Andrea folded his long legs and settled onto the sofa without resistance.

She carefully turned his large, knuckled hand over in hers, and he laced his fingers through hers with easy warmth. Encouraged by that response, she lifted her eyes to him with a deliberately soft expression and spoke.

“……I want to be in a relationship first.”

She absolutely did not say ‘I want to be in a relationship before marriage.’

He would figure that part out on his own in time.

Andrea’s thick eyebrows curved at a skeptical angle.

Having been turned down consistently from the day after their first kiss through this third proposal just now, he was feeling something peculiar.

The suspicion that Riley was quietly avoiding the subject of marriage made him narrow his eyes.

“You know, you can be in a relationship and be married. I don’t like you living here alone. You might as well do what Parnelli suggests and move into the Count of Radonel household. Arranging a proper title for you is no trouble at all.”

“I don’t want that. Why is he suddenly coming up again?”

At the mention of Parnelli’s name, Riley frowned with visible distaste and shook her head, grumbling.

The truth was that Andrea had decided it was more useful to keep Parnelli around, and had not forbidden his visits. As a result, Parnelli had been showing up at Riley’s house with irritating frequency lately, trying to win her over.

Riley, for her part, was thoroughly fed up with him.

“I have no interest in acknowledging any connection with that opportunist.”

Riley’s resentful expression was equal parts endearing and petty, and Andrea let out a short laugh.

“Fine, if you dislike him that much, I’ll restore the Spencer viscountcy’s title to you. Once you’re a viscountess, we can marry right away. Though that’s not strictly necessary either.”

Even if the crown princess were a commoner, the king was in no position to say anything to Andrea at this point.

The king firmly believed that he had taken the young lady Andrea had been interested in, the social season’s rising star who had nearly become his daughter-in-law.

Holding both a sense of masculine triumph and guilt toward his son at the same time, the king had recently transferred even more administrative authority to Andrea out of a compensatory impulse.

Of course, it was also partly because he was preoccupied with his young new romance and wanted a temporary escape from the headache of political struggle.

But power, once it leaves one’s hands, is difficult to reclaim.

Even when the one holding it is your own son.

Furthermore, the king had placed a girl from a modest family on the throne as queen based on looks alone, which left him without grounds to strongly oppose whoever Andrea chose as crown princess.