Namor grinned at his triumph and his established position.

CHAPTER 7

"...I was afraid of something like this," said Reed, sitting on the couch in the large living room as his wife confessed to him what had happened to Namor.

She was standing in front of him, and having this conversation with her husband was perhaps the hardest battle yet.

"Reed, it wasn't planned this way."

"Perhaps not on your part," he said.

Mr. Fantastic had always been very good at keeping his emotions in check and not letting them show, unlike a certain king, but now he was fighting to maintain his composure.

"I wouldn't have thought you'd give in to temptation. Okay, I can understand you in a way... but still. For my sake and the children's, I thought..."

"I..."

Sue searched for the right words.

"I don't know how it happened either."

Sue, of course, only told the bare minimum, not that she had felt an unexpected lust in the mating hall after dinner, which Namor had sensed and gratefully accepted.

"Reed..." Sue said, sitting down next to him.

She rubbed his back, which she always did when he was brooding or worried about something.

"...I love you. Very much. But I slept with Namor and I liked it. Very much, and I'd like to do it again. But that has nothing to do with you."

She stroked his cheek.

"Just one word from you is enough, and I'll end it if you want."

Endless seconds passed, and no answer followed.

"I don't know what I'm doing, and neither do you, but..."

"I just want you to be happy, and if Namor is the man who makes you happy right now, so be it. I have to go back to the lab. I'm trying to speed up the translation programs with an algorithm. So far, it's stuck at 9 percent," he said matter-of-factly.

"Do that," Sue said weakly, and kissed her husband.

If he had truly objected, given in, and fought for her, perhaps Sue would have changed her mind after all, but she got up and went to Namor's room. He was lying naked on the bed, and when he saw The Invisible Woman standing in the doorway, he grinned at his triumph and his established position.

"Come here, woman!" he commanded.

Sue closed the door behind her and opened the top of her Fantastic Four uniform.