Yor had a problem.
Admittedly, she had numerous problems ranging from general social awkwardness to homicidal impulses that tended to be her default response to most challenges because murder and disposal of a body just seemed like an expedient solution.
Especially when Camilla began to gossip about Anya missing her real mother or Loid probably being hard up, whatever that meant. Nothing good, based on the context. In such instances, numerous as they were, while her blond coworker waxed on, assuming she couldn't be overheard, Yor groped the knife strapped to her thigh with all the ardor and enthusiasm of a teenage boy reaching second base. The urge to kill only grew more intense to the point of scattering Yor's capacity for thought.
Speaking of urges, though, they were really rather acute at this very moment.
Yor, having settled in to read on the living room sofa, felt her face flaming up like a campfire.
On the surface of the sun.
It had started in the most innocent of fashions, when Anya, Loid's utterly adorable little daughter who had embraced Yor, undeserving though she was, as a mother, asked her papa to draw her a bubble bath. Anya had bounced on her feet, hands clasped together as if she was making an entreaty to a benevolent deity.
Yor would have murdered a random passerby to fulfill Anya's wish. She'd murdered for less, after all, but Loid, a faint smile on his lips, hadn't felt that to be necessary, instead scooping the giggling girl up in his arms and carting her to the bathroom.
Already, Yor's plight was rather grim because carrying a child somehow seemed to amplify Loid's general attractiveness roughly five-fold and conjured images of him rocking a black-haired little baby in his arms, Yor behind him to sing the child to sleep. She would lace her fingers with those of her husband and lead him off to their bedroom while teasing the thin strap of her nightgown from her shoulders and Loid con-.
Yor had shaken that thought out of her head. She was not romantically or- or physically attracted to her husband, no matter what fantasies might creep into her mind as she watched him filling the bathtub while Anya rummaged about for an appropriate set of toys to join her in the foam.
From the way that the women at work talked, that just wasn't natural. They certainly didn't seem all that interested in their husbands.
But then, as every muscle in Yor's well-trained core and iron-wrought thighs tightened and flexed, Loid had begun to work on loosing the cuffs of his dress shirt, scraping the pad of his thumb over the button. A suppressed, dissatisfied grunt tumbled out of his mouth, his teeth exposed as if he was pained, until he finally, with a forceful thrust of a broad yet elegant finger, slipped a gleaming button through the tight, beleaguered buttonhole while Yor, for no reason she could fathom, surreptitiously bit down on a thumb to keep from screaming aloud. Molten lead was pounding through her veins, the viscous fluid toxic and scalding even as it warmed her up in a way that should have been repugnant and vile, yet proved anything but.
Then, Loid had rolled up his sleeves, one at a time, exposing inch after inch of lithe arm, dusted with a fine forest of blond hairs that likely sprouted over his legs and perhaps his stomach, the strands becoming lush as they dipped down below-
That was not a thought that Yor should be having.
So she went back to reading her magazine with as much relish as she could muster, but only a few moments later, as if her nerves weren't already sufficiently frayed, she heard a yelp of shock that had her jerking in place, accidentally tearing the edge off her evening reading material. Ever adept at hiding remains, she concealed the evidence by stuffing the scraps torn from the edge into the couch cushions.
Apparently, Yor found as she looked up, in her exuberance, Anya had accidentally splashed Loid with a wave of sudsy water that now plastered the white, semi-transparent fabric of his dress shirt to his chest as he staggered to his feet.
"Sorry, papa!" Anya yelped as she sunk down into the bath water to the point that her head disappeared from Yor's view.
Good god in heaven why hadn't Loid closed the door? It wasn't fair to subject an innocent woman to this kind of sight, which only grew more heinously offensive to all standards of decorum and good taste and morality when Loid smiled with characteristic patience.
"It's not a problem, Anya, but you should be more careful," he chastised in a gentle tone. "You wouldn't want to hurt yourself."
With that, he stripped.
Not everything, of course.
Not with Anya right there which likely meant that Yor would have to arrange babysitting services if she was ever to hope to see anything more salacious unveiled to her, which she certainly wouldn't because she wasn't allowed to feel such things for a grieving widower who was serving as an ally of convenience in their sham marriage.
Just his shirt, which, after unfastening the buttons, he opened to the sides, peeling the sodden fabric off his body to expose an immaculate expanse of flesh that was all mathematical perfection in the fine-cut lines and grooves and crevices that her gaze seared and gilded. Clearly Loid was a benevolent deity of the Greek variety in light of the sculpted perfection of his chest and abs and shoulders and arms and fingers and Yor's list was getting a little bit awkward and obsessive...
Not since her last assassination had she stared so intently at a target.
But this time, she might be on the receiving end of the knife, the grim reaper's hands closing around her heart as it throbbed and thudded in her chest, right on the verge of coronary failure.
Other things started throbbing too, but a gentlewoman didn't talk about that.
She did, however, stare, slack-jawed, from behind the magazine she had hastily scrambled to pluck up again in order to hide the drool that was currently dribbling down her chin.
Yes.
It was, indeed, getting very... drippy in here.
She probably wasn't doing a very good job, considering she was holding the magazine upside-down, she realized, but it was better than nothing. The error only became apparent when she caught the article's print in her peripheral vision. That simply wouldn't do, so she rotated her magazine one-hundred-and-eighty degrees. Another problem was that she didn't actually shift her grip to do so, instead crossing her arms in front of her.
She was rather flexible, what with the combat training.
Frankly, an axe-wielding assailant could smash through her living room window at this very moment, and her gaze would not be drawn away. Not like she couldn't have kicked his head clean off his shoulders without even bothering to look, but still.
Even the appearance of the famed Westalian super-spy, Twilight, wouldn't have been able to distract her from the rippling and mountainous contours of Loid's abs that glistened with moisture, little droplets coalescing and dollops of foam scattered about in tantalizing patterns that she needed to scrutinize lest the Shopkeeper had, perhaps, deigned to send an unorthodox coded message.
In fact, she could read it right now.
It said...
Lick me.
Yes.
That was what her clandestine contact, Loid's abs, was telling her.
Lick me, Yor.
Everything was flinching and flexing muscle. Broad pectorals exceeded the paltry grasp of her hands, each dotted with a tiny pink nipple and surrounded by slightly more dusky areola, their circumference a few millimeters less than that of her puckered lips, and, apparently, Loid had the exercise regime and genetics that allowed for... yes, indeed.
That was an eight pack, sudsy and slick.
Yor kind of wanted to touch it. Put a hand to the grooves. Poke each orb of muscle.
And heed its clear command to lick it.
Yor did none of these things.
"I'm going for an evening walk!" she yelped, squeezing shut her eyes only to find that the image of Loid's chest and abs – to say nothing of those firm arms that would cradle her head so perfectly were she to cuddle up to him in a shared bed – were burned into her retina or inscribed on the backs of her eyelids with florescent paint that showed even in the darkness. Honed instinct alone allowed her to make the journey to the door without killing herself, though she wasn't able to avoid tripping thrice.
And face-planting into a wall.
Walking was hard with her thighs clenched together.
As it turned out.
"Are you okay?" came Loid's concerned yet apparently baffled response as she groped for the door-handle while the thought of groping – she did mental math – approximately twenty-three other things simultaneously somehow flitted through her brain.
"Oh, yes. I just need some air." Lots of air, seeing as she didn't think that she had breathed since Loid had shown off the first inch of his hairless chest.
"Well, I'll see you before bed tonight."
Oh. Yes. Bed. Before which Loid also shucked his shirt and launched an assault on the button just above the zipper to his fly...
If Loid had anything else to add, it was cut off by the slamming of the door, against which Yor collapsed the moment that she'd escaped the stifling heat of the apartment. Sadly for her, she seemed to be carting that around with her as she nearly scalded her palms when she slapped them to her cheeks in mortification.
Inevitably, this was going to end as it began.
Poorly.