He wanted to shatter Riley into pieces and pull her inside himself, and if he could not do that, he wanted to mark his territory inside her.

His lower abdomen seethed with the desire to brand her.

Ah.

When had this terrifying possessiveness grown inside him?

Riley’s fragile shoulders, trembling with helpless sobs. Her chest marked with the rough imprints of his hands.

The sweat that had gathered along his jaw ran down his throat and dripped onto her flushed, swollen chest.

Her small body swayed like white sand pushed by a wave.

The sight, sensuality and innocence tangled together, made his eyes ache, and Andrea lowered his lids.

But even if everything felt like a dream, this wringing, unbearable pleasure was real.

Riley, sobbing with pleasure, was real too.

“Hng.”

He opened his eyes as though to confirm it, and found himself reflected in her glassy pupils.

She held the sight of his animal self in her eyes, and she looked devastatingly indecent and pure all at once, and it pierced Andrea’s heart.

That was why he was losing his mind.

What am I going to do with you? Even after having you, I’ll want more.

There’s no way I’ll ever lose you, is there?

“Mmhh……”

Riley was just as frightened.

The more the motion continued, slamming deep inside her and then pulling back like a retreating tide, the more the pleasure intensified, and Riley was overwhelmed.

“Hhng……”

What had started as something strange and languid had at some point extended fierce tendrils in every direction.

“Mmhh…… Andy!”

She called his nickname without meaning to, the one she had always held back from using.

She had tasted something like this from his touch alone before, but this was on a different level entirely.

Pleasure crashed through her body in waves, rising to a dangerous height.

Each time he drove into her in those deep, sharp thr*sts, Riley began to drift upward, swept somewhere high by a violent gust.

Without the hands gripping her limbs, she felt she would have already fallen from that height.

I’m scared.

Andrea was pushing her higher for some reason.

Overwhelmed by the relentless thrusting, Riley squeezed her eyes shut and murmured.

“Mmhh, it feels strange. Something…… my body…… ah, ah……!”

But Andrea, eyes half-lidded and cold, kept moving with single-minded focus and could no longer hear anything.

He drove on by instinct alone, chasing only pleasure. It felt like all the blood in his body was rushing to his lower half, swelling there.

He had been moving like that for a long while when it happened.

“……Ah, ah…… ahh……!”

Riley’s slender waist, which had been rolling helplessly with the waves, arched taut as a drawn bowstring, and her nails raked across Andrea’s shoulder.

Her eyes trembled at the corners, her whole body convulsing as though struck by lightning.

“Ahh……!”

Behind her eyelids, everything turned to white ash and shattered.

The sensation that shuddered through her entire body was overwhelming. Every muscle rode the cresting wave of her peak and spasmed on its own, and her lower abdomen clenched in violent, rhythmic pulses.

Andrea pulled her close as she trembled through the devastating fall, and curved his own back, going rigid. He had nothing left to hold back with.

The relentless clenching around him made his skull throb.

The veins in his neck stood out sharply as Andrea let out a ragged exhale, and the dark, pent-up desire that had been building inside him burst free in an explosion.

“Hng.”

He felt his own vision go black, as though struck by lightning. Something tore savagely through the top of his head and his lower abdomen. His limbs trembled on their own.

At last, he began to pour everything he had been holding back into Riley in deep, shuddering waves.

He pressed deeper and released everything.

A long, overwhelming peak swept over both of them without mercy.

Buried beneath his large frame, Riley lay limp, and the ragged, animal breathing against her ear gradually faded. Only their hearts, beating out of rhythm, pounded hard against each other’s chests.

When the storm of sensation passed, the silence in the room was stark, but the two of them lay tangled together for a long while, drunk on each other’s pulse and warmth.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

“I…… think I’d like to leave the Minerve.”

“……Why all of a sudden?”

Andrea looked up from his tea and newspaper with a surprised expression.

“You love that work.”

He clearly remembered how excited she had been about becoming a journalist.

But Riley avoided his suspicious gaze and mumbled.

“Hmm…… it just doesn’t feel like my path after all. Once I hand in the manuscript for this issue, I think it’s best I step back.”

Andrea stared at her for a moment, then stood up. He crossed to the seat beside her on the sofa and dropped down into it, then took her chin and turned her face toward him.

“Did something happen?”

Riley avoided his searching look and made excuses.

“Oh, n, no. It’s just that romance novel illustrations are more interesting to me than stiff political cartoons. Social satire is something people who actually understand it should do. What do I know.”

Andrea frowned slightly and said in a firm tone.

“You were doing very well.”

But Riley gave a small shake of her head, and he had no choice but to concede simply.

“All right, if that’s how you feel.”

From Andrea’s perspective, it did not matter much either way.

Everyone who needed to be ruined had already been ruined.

“Oh, and a few jewelers and craftsmen will be coming by later, so be ready. I have to head out soon for my schedule, but.”

Riley was left speechless at that and had to grab his arm as he was about to stand.

“You, you said you’d give me a little more time to think.”

Having done what she did with him while wearing that wedding dress, and now trying to quietly slip away from it all, guilt made her voice tremble slightly at the end.

But she could not help it.

She was afraid of what unhappiness might come later if she let herself be swept along by the momentum of his relentless proposal.

She was not certain about any of it.

Even after having all of him the night before.

The truth was that until now, she had been approaching his proposal with a playful, curious, almost daring spirit, substituting Andrea for a real-life Captain Alain in her mind.

But now that morning had come, something had shifted.

And yet certainty was still hard to find.

They did like each other, that much was true, but still……

Is it really all right to just say yes like this?

Shouldn’t a loyal subject be like Miss Nina, brave enough to stop her superior from making a wrong decision?

But Andrea seemed to see straight through her wavering, and spoke first.

“Riley, you……”

He looked down at her with that characteristic unhurried gaze, as though he was about to scold her for something.

But he seemed to change his mind, let out a small sigh, and gave a slight nod.

“All right. For now, I’ll go along with whatever you want.”

It sounded like he meant to push harder once ‘for now’ was over.

“……”

It was a little daunting, but somehow the answer that he would wait also felt like something to be grateful for, and Riley’s face went faintly pink.

Finding that endearing, Andrea gave her cheek a light bite and toppled her over onto the soft cushions.

These days, their moments of affection paid no attention to whether it was day or night.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

A few days later, Andrea stopped by the Minerve’s office and asked Edwin, who happened to be there alone.

“Riley says she wants to quit. Did something happen?”

Edwin flinched and scratched his furrowed brow, mumbling.

“Hmm…… well…… I don’t think anything in particular…… happened.”

The answer was far too vague, and Andrea sensed something immediately.

“What is it. Tell me.”

Edwin scratched his head and finally opened his mouth.

“Hmm…… this is purely my intuition, but……”

A look that said stop stalling made Edwin come out with it.

“It’s probably Nina, I’d think.”

He scratched his chin and added.

“It’s a good thing that Riley’s illustrations are well received, but Nina seems to believe they’re gradually disrupting the Minerve’s function and balance. She expressed something to that effect to me as well, and I told her to let it go…… Surely she didn’t go and voice her opinion to Miss Riley on her own……?”

Edwin stumbled along, trying to say something in Nina’s defense, but before he could finish, Andrea had already walked out of the office.

And a few hours later, Nina returned from a story and was handed off to palace attendants waiting for her and seated in a drawing room.

Before Andrea.

“Ah. So that’s what happened.”

Hearing her honest answer, Andrea leaned forward and confirmed it.

“I see. So you told Riley that. That her illustrations had lost their original purpose.”

“……Yes.”

Nina tried to hold herself with composure, but watching him trace the gold rim of his teacup with one finger, his expression blank, she went stiff. The faint, barely-there smile on that cool face was unsettling for reasons she could not name.

Even so, Nina told herself that she had acted out of loyalty, keeping the Daily Minerve in balance.

He would understand in time.

So she tried to soften the tense atmosphere and smiled gently, as though to persuade him.

“You’ll come to see it too, Your Highness. The moment a role that was built purely on efficiency begins to break the balance of the whole organization, it must be cut. I believe the Minerve no longer needs column illustrations or satirical cartoons. Excessive attacks breed resentment and come back like a boomerang.”