The clock on the wall methodically ticked in his ear. Sylvain threw a quick glance at the hands that dragged along as the time crawled to a halt.
Three minutes, she will be here in three minutes, he thought. His pale fingers began to tap an impatient rhythm on an armchair's wooden surface. Just one hundred twenty heartbeats and she will be here.
Today was their anniversary of sorts. It was exactly half a year since they started their affair. He never thought it would last this long. It was supposed to be just a fling, a mere exercise in the art of seduction, just a little detour to spice up his afternoons for a while, to wait for the fate he always dreaded expectantly, nothing more. Alas, he forgot to take into account that he decided to entice not an ordinary woman, but the Byleth Eisner. Sure enough, the slight woman managed to turn tables on him. Oh well, he knew that he got exactly what he deserved.
"Fuck." He muttered and glanced at the clock once again. "Two more minutes."
The nobleman groaned, and his mind travelled to the near past. Six months ago, Sylvain had met her in Garreg Mach by pure chance. Of course, there was always the chance that he would have met his former teacher whenever he set foot in the Church's headquarters. Where else the heir to the Archbishop would be? Yet, he did not expect having her hear Gautier's demands.
There had been a paper war going between his territory and the Monastery. It had been all about the forsaken Sreng people, of course. For months, the margrave and him had tried to explain to the dim-witted Cardinal in Faerghus that, for the last five years, Gautier has been using paid labour exclusively, and not selling them off to slavery, as the damn clergy seemed determined to believe. Whether it was due to their heavenly work or if they wanted an increase on the tithes was beyond him.
Finally fed up with Monastery's idiocy and bureaucracy, Sylvain had decided to pay them a visit. There, he had bumped into his professor. He had been led to the Audience Chamber, still thinking he would be speaking with Lady Rhea, until the double doors opened and he gazed upon the throne at the end of the room and gawked.
Byleth looked bored, frustrated and absolutely beautiful, like the vision of the Goddess herself, having to deal with the minor disputes of humanity. The way her clumsily fitted robes had hinted on the softness beneath, her serious emerald eyes and her plump lips sealed the deal.
Unsurprisingly, it only had taken her five minutes to resolve Sylvain's Sreng slavery problem, and it had taken the same five minutes for Sylvain to decide that he just had to have her. He just could not help himself. He had always had a taste for the divine, and the immaculate taboo of it all only enticed him further.
Sylvain smiled, remembering just how mystified the professor had been by his sudden attention then. How adorably self-conscious she had acted when he was around. It had been quite amusing to conquer the one and only Byleth Eisner. To see how her carefully erected walls had been falling one by one under his masterful seduction. She had not stood a chance against him.
He had fancied himself a hero, then. He had been on a rescue mission of poor, boring Byleth from her mundane, predictable life. To return her some semblance of the mercenary life she had relinquished when she and her father came to Garreg Mach, years prior. He had been certain that he had brought some sense of impulsiveness and excitement into her otherwise dull existence, regulated by the demands of the religion and Lady Rhea.
Though, the woman herself probably had never thought about her life that way, or else she would have left Garreg Mach by now. Honestly, how could she have? She knows nothing about the life of the aristocracy from sleeping in the elements and fighting for gold over the years. She had probably genuinely loved to listen on and on to the monks complaining about the youth these days if it meant coming back to a comfortable bed and a warm meal, and had truly believed that there is nothing better in this world than to help the nobles from the three nations keep their fiefs together. Luckily for her, Sylvain Gautier, a stray knight in shining armour had magically appeared on her horizon. The woman had not had a clue that she was about to be rescued.
It had taken him only a month of intensive wooing and secret dates in the Kingdom before Byleth Eisner became his.
That was where the surprises had started.
First of all, he had expected her to be shy and fairly innocent. She is the Archbishop's granddaughter, after all. Her virtue should have been doggedly preserved by Jeralt, had his experience with the man be any indication. He had been utterly wrong. The woman had turned out to be scorching hot in bed. Apparently, she had plenty of experiences, from both sexes, throughout Fódlan and beyond. Her romantic education had been as cosmopolitan as her cultural parlance and her martial prowess. Sylvain was actually surprised that his hair and eyelashes had not been charred after their first time. Yup, the professor had been that smoking hot.
Plus, he had found her to be forsaken addicting. After just a few wild encounters he suddenly had come to the understanding that he simply could not get enough of her. The more he had her, the more he wanted. To say that Sylvain had not anticipated that his little fling with Byleth Eisner would metamorphose into a full-blown love affair would be an astronomical understatement.
He was freaking done for!
Months went by, and today he, Sylvain Gautier, sat there, in his garçonnière in Fhirdiad, shirtless, restless and already extremely randy, counting seconds before the woman would show up on his threshold.
He was pathetically in love with her.
That much was pretty obvious even to him. His life turned into hell because he lived only from one date to the next. He did not enjoy anything else anymore. Not his business, not women, not jousting, not even his weekly chess matches with Felix and Dimitri. Everything seemed bleak and mind-numbingly boring to him. Now, it was actually his life that appeared mundane, at least in between their meetings. He was always waiting for the next encounter. He could only breathe properly when he was with her, and the moment she was gone, he immediately missed her. The damned woman had put a spell on him.
Moreover, he envied the monks and the Knights of Seiros. She saw them more often than him, or so he thought. If he had applied himself more to his education, had followed Byleth's direction all those years before, he could be at Garreg Mach with her, instead from being trapped in Faerghus due to his demands at his family's territory, dependant on warping spells to be able to see his woman.
He is remiss in reminding himself that they are not to be public with their liaison, to preserve their reputations and the customs of the aristocracy. True, at first it had been his idea to keep their relationship a secret, as transparency would impede him from being as forward with his other affairs. Now, however, it annoyed him just how comfortable she became with her secret affair with him.
She saw him once or twice a week in his hidden apartment and looked entirely contented with it. Sylvain, on the other hand, was not happy with their current arrangements, not at all. He wanted for the whole world to know that Byleth Eisner was his and his alone, and it was only about forsaken time for it to happen. Gautier men did not play well with others, and they never shared.
Sylvain's musings were interrupted by a hurried heels' tapping.
"Finally, punctual as always!" He muttered and stood up.
The moment she knocked, he threw the door opened and pulled her inside. Impatiently shutting the door, he pressed her into the wooden surface, marvelling in how soft and warm she felt. Immediately, his lips found hers.
"I missed you, woman." He groaned a moment later into her mouth, tracing her neck's soft skin with his lips and nibbling at her collar bone. His fingers already found her dress' hem and inched it higher and higher, aiming for her silk stocking-clad thighs.
Ah, there. He loved her perfectly sculpted legs and thighs, and he just adored her perfectly shaped butt. She was Venus for him, his very own Venus.
Byleth's only response was a soft moan as she eagerly pressed herself into his wandering hands. Her lips found Sylvain's earlobe, and she bit him playfully.
He groaned, delighted. Desperate for skin-on-skin contact, he tore apart her dress, leaving her in only her breast ties and knickers. As he was already shirtless, he pressed his bare chest to her. Her soft underwear caressed his skin. It was charming, but he needed more, much more of her. Thus, keeping her immobilised with his hips, he deftly untied the silky ribbons that supported her ample bosom.
"Oh." Byleth breathed out when his hot palms found her breasts. Her arms reached around the redhead's neck, and she whispered into his ear, "Take me, Sylvain. Take me right here, against the door."
Of course, he gladly did take her, right there, against the door, hard and fast, just as she liked. He then brought her to his bed and loved her slowly, savouring every marvellous moment of their coupling.
Hours later, as he lay in bed and held the woman in his arms, Sylvain decided that the time had come. He just had it with these twice-a-week meetings. The fact that she was not at all in a rush to inform her grandmother about their affair annoyed the hell out of him.
"Byleth, I think it is high time for us to go public." He said into her hair, suddenly, not allowing for the slightest afterglow.
She faced him and asked, "Why? What's the rush?"
"Why, for the Goddess' sake, not?" He frowned, disappointed with the woman's resistance.
The woman arched her eyebrow at him.
"I thought you did not want us to go public. I was under the impression that you did not want anybody to know about us." Byleth shrugged her shoulders, as if she was saying the most obvious platitude in the world.
"That was before!" Sylvain spoke, visibly disconcerted. "Now I want them to know, all of them. My father, yours, the Church, Felix, Ingrid, Dimitri. I want the world to know, and I want it as soon as possible."
"Before when, Sylvain?" She goaded him. "What changed so dramatically for you to take such a stance?"
"Goddess gracious, Byleth, why must you be this obtuse while I am candid?" He growled. "I love you! There, happy now? My life is dull without you. I want you to be here with me always. I want you to stay the night. I want you to have breakfast with me. I want to see Dimitri's face when you bring me along to your routine meeting with him. I want to enjoy Claude's reaction as well. I want you to ride through my territory with me, to parade you to the peasants. I want to stick it to the cardinals. Heck, I want you to move to Gautier with me. And, in a few Moons' time, I want to put the margravine ring on your finger. I want this all now."
Byleth offered him a mere little smirk.
"Took you long enough, Sylvain." She murmured and kissed him softly. "Alright, darling, I will rescue you from your mundane, boring life. It is high time for a change."