The guest room in the West Residence.
Moonlight fell across the window. The courtyard was utterly silent.
Empress Dowager Guo reclined on a chaise longue, reviewing intelligence sent from the Northern Region by candlelight. Her brow carried the regal dignity of a mother to the realm, but her legs, curled up tightly together, and the faint blush on her cheeks still betrayed that tiny trace of worldly longing in her heart lake.
After leaving that morning, Empress Dowager Guo had fallen asleep the moment she lay down. By the time she woke, she was already at the Marquis's Residence; Yuehua had brought her back.
Afterward, she had been dazed, her back and knees weak, feeling as though all that exertion had worked her witless. Even now, after recovering, she could still feel a faint, tingling numbness...
As the Goddess of War of the Northern Border, Empress Dowager Guo had an exceptionally resilient physique. An ordinary woman might have needed half a month before she could get out of bed, but she had mostly recovered in half a day. She even felt something rather inexplicable. Hmm...
In the past, her lofty position and formidable strength had meant she always looked down on others from above. Apart from Mei Conggao, no one had ever dared treat her with disrespect. Yet yesterday she had been pinned down and bullied mercilessly, teased and mocked with all sorts of words, unable to dodge, escape, or hold back. By rights, she should have felt humiliated, but because the other party was the man she liked, it had awakened something strange within her...
Was this adoration...?
Empress Dowager Guo did not consider herself a woman who sought thrills, but now that night had fallen, that feeling of being powerless to resist kept surfacing in her mind. As