The apartment had floor-to-ceiling windows.

London grey outside — the specific, committed grey of a city that had made its peace with the absence of sun and was now thriving in it — and against that grey, the interior of the penthouse caught the morning light in warm amber panels across the hardwood floor.

The hardwood floor that currently had a problem.

The problem was Frau Muller.

Specifically, the problem was that Frau Muller was attempting a yoga swing — the aerial silk looped at the anchor point above the living room’s high ceiling, her thick body suspended at the midpoint of a backbend that her body was providing extensive commentary on — and the commentary had just reached its conclusion.

"Veronica—"

The gasp.

The silk swung.

"Veronica — it is too — I cannot—"

She fell.

Not far — the silk caught her at the hips, leaving her hanging at an awkward diagonal three feet from the floor, her legs over her head, her skirt demonstrating through gravity’s assistance exactly what she was wearing underneath it, her face the face of a woman who had agreed to something and now had opinions about that agreement.

"I cannot," she said, to the ceiling. Her voice — the melodious, carrying warmth of the Siren bloodline sitting in her vocal cords like a cello string tuned just right — turning even complaint into something accidentally beautiful. "It is too hard. My back—"

"Your back is fine."

Veronica did not look up from her stretch.

She was on the floor ten feet away — the full, comprehensive stretch of a woman who had been doing this for forty minutes and had opinions about efficiency — her spine curved backward, her hands flat on the floor behind her, the crimson hair cascading downward to pool against the hardwood.

Naked.

Completely, unself-consciously, architecturally naked.

The crimson eyes focused on the ceiling while her body went through the motion of the stretch with the dedicated attention of someone who had a project and was working on it.

The sweat.

A fine, comprehensive layer of it — covering the full length of her from the curve of her shoulders to the high, round swell of her ass — catching the grey London light and turning it gold.

She looked like something that had been deliberately lit.

"Veronica," Frau Muller said, still hanging from the silk. "Why are you naked. It is nine in the morning."

"Because I burn more calories without clothing impeding the process." Veronica moved into the next position — a slow, deliberate forward fold, the full weight of her breasts pressing against her thighs, swinging slightly with the motion. "And because fat doesn’t know what time it is."

"You don’t have fat."

"Not anymore." She straightened. Ran one hand down her own side — ribs, waist, the outward sweep of her hip — with the assessing, clinical attention of a woman conducting quality control. "Which is the entire point."

Frau Muller extracted herself from the silk with the careful, undignified effort of someone who had made a decision about aerial yoga that they were now revising. She landed on both feet, adjusted her skirt, pushed her hair from her face.

She was thick.

The comfortable, comprehensive thickness of a woman in her prime — the heavy chest currently contained in a sports bra that was doing serious structural work, the full hips, the soft belly that had always been soft and had never apologized for it, the wide thighs pressing together at their inner edges.

She looked at Veronica with the expression of a woman who had been doing yoga for forty minutes at someone else’s insistence and would like an explanation.

"You talk about him constantly," she said. "It has been over a week. Even you said he would come, but—"

"He’s coming."

"You always say—"

"He’s—"

"And you are completely naked for the entire duration of his absence and you make me do aerial yoga at nine in the morning, Veronica, and I would simply like to understand the ’reasoning’—"

"The reasoning," Veronica said, turning to face her with the calm, direct energy of someone explaining something to a person who should already understand it, "is that he is going to come back with new women."

Frau Muller blinked.

"Young women," Veronica continued. "Young bodies. I have seen the way he looks at young bodies. I have a competitive advantage in several areas but I refuse to lose ground in the areas I can control." Her hand found her own breast — not salaciously, the assessing grip of someone checking structural integrity. "If I let myself soften he’ll spend all his time with the ones who haven’t. I am not letting that happen."

"So the nudity—"

"Is so I can see exactly what needs work in real time."

"...Veronica."

"And besides," she added, her crimson eyes finding Frau Muller’s with the specific, warm amusement of someone who is being honest because they have decided honesty is more efficient than pretending, "the cold air keeps the nipples presented. He notices."

Frau Muller pressed her hand over her face.

"You are insane," she said.

"I am prepared," Veronica said, and turned back to her stretch.

The hand arrived from nowhere.

Not from the door — the door had not opened. Not from the window — the window was closed, nine floors up, overlooking London grey. From the ’air,’ the warm, solid, certain hand of a man who had decided where he was going and had arrived there without consulting the space between.

It found Frau Muller’s breast.

Through the sports bra fabric — the full, firm grip of a hand that knew exactly what it was holding and had held it before and was reporting in on the quality — fingers molding around the generous weight of her, thumb finding the specific location of her nipple through two layers of fabric with the navigational certainty of something that did not need to see to find what it was looking for.

Her other hand went to her skirt.

Under it. Up. The warm, direct arrival of his palm pressing flat against the fabric of her underwear, then pressing ’through’ it — not moving the fabric aside, pressing through the intention of it — and finding the heat underneath.

He grabbed her hair.

"KYAAA~!?"