Sunbeam Lair seorsum

Oh, she longed to do more. The intense eyes of the Imperator held her to the spot—suddenly, the faintest brush of his flank to her not nearly enough. As the lightning danced along the walls of where they lay, she could imagine a feast that explored the depths of what she felt—held in his embrace, the heat of his body against hers and his teeth and mouth to her throat and face.

He could forget his wife, for the moment, and she could pretend that she had been the one chosen, finally, by someone.

But the price of such an act would be too high—she knew this, and so when he spoke the single word—hope—she also intricately believed it meant he was not ready to ask for anything from her. Not openly. And to partake in such an act was certainly closing a door firmly with another she was beginning to care so deeply for. Reyson, either, would not ask anything of her. His expectation for his partner to tell him outright.

And come spring, whatever fantasies she imagined with either man would come to pass when they would both be overcome with the most basic demand of nature. And they would give in, without any thought or regard to her thoughts or feelings on it. As it always had been.

Hope, he spoke of. And she smiled, unable to hold his hesitancy against him. How could she, when his entire world had just fallen apart? And so she leaned forward, allowing them both the easy way out—“share this with me,” she murmured, plucking the pheasant closer to them. “And distract me from the storm… Tell me your happiest memory?”