Under the moonlight streaming through the window, the man’s large body was fully exposed.
From the beautifully defined collarbones and his broad, solid chest, to his thick frame—too massive to be enclosed by both arms—down to his abs, knit together without a single gap.
It was the body of a man in his prime.
Blair looked at his physique as if seeing something alien.
Even though it was a body she had already seen countless times in her past life, she couldn’t help but feel that it was strange.
‘Is it… the expression?’
Unlike in her past life, when he had acted the role of a loving husband, his blue eyes now held nothing but pure desire.
In this moment, Blair finally understood what it meant to be overwhelmed by a gaze.
She braced her body, tense with anxiety. Her heart pounded against her ribs. Even as she only watched him, she felt as if she were about to be devoured alive.
Suddenly, she felt a fear of the man wearing a stranger’s face. Yet, contradictorily, a ticklish heat began to rise from deep within her abdomen.
Even though she had returned to a body that didn’t know him yet, it still remembered the pleasure he had once given her.
She felt miserable, knowing that even after crossing the threshold of death and returning to the past, she was still reacting to him. As her body refused to obey her, Blair decided to stop looking at him instead.
Headrin’s brow furrowed as he watched his wife stubbornly turn her head away.
She had been the one to chatter fearlessly about marital duties and the like, but now that she was laid upon the bed, she looked as if she were about to cry.
“If you do that, it doesn’t look like a ‘good relationship.’ It looks like I’m some bastard ravishing his wife.”
Blair flinched at his words. A moment later, she reluctantly turned her gaze back to him. It seemed there was no intention to call off the clauses of that strange contract.
Headrin pressed his lips to hers as if he had been waiting for exactly that.
“Hn…!”
Blocked by the bedsheets, with all paths of retreat cut off, the kiss grew deeper and more persistent. A soft, pained moan escaped from between Blair’s teeth.
Headrin pulled away from Blair’s gasping lips and trailed his mouth down to her pale neck.
The woman’s skin emitted a sweet scent. It was a fragrance that felt like flowers, or perhaps fruits.
Drunk on that scent, he kissed her along her throat and the curve of her shoulders before tearing away the bothersome slip she wore. The garment, delicate to begin with, ripped apart with ease.
This revealed the slender body that had been hidden beneath. It was a far more beautiful form than he had imagined from her silhouette.
Startled by the cold air touching her bare skin, Blair hurriedly tried to cover herself, but Headrin easily intercepted her hands.
He savored the woman in his arms. Her skin was as smooth as whipped cream. Only, it was a flavor that wouldn’t melt away, no matter how much he rolled it in his mouth.
Blair pushed against his solid, unyielding shoulders, her voice tearful.
“This… I don’t want this.”
She knew he was acting this way out of consideration for her.
But she hated it because his actions overlapped with the man of her past.
She was terrified that she would mistake those touches, that warmth, for love again.
“Just… just do it. Please.”
However, instead of pulling away, he snatched her by the waist and pulled her into him, just as she tried to retreat.
“Ah!”
Headrin immediately realized she was lying. His lips curled into a crooked smirk as he looked at her trembling legs.
“Well, I think your body likes it.”
Ignoring Blair’s resistance, he immersed himself in acclimating her body to his. The resistance against his fingers was quite intense.
That reaction caused a dull, throbbing pain to spread through his lower abdomen.
His desire, already fully aroused, urged him to do as she asked, but he gritted his teeth and suppressed his urges.
Of course, this woman would be beautiful even when crying.
Imagining that, perhaps it would be even more exciting to just satisfy his own desires as she had suggested. But he felt as if this fragile woman would crumble and break if he did.
He could not lose the most precious witness to ‘that’ incident, swept away by a momentary desire. That would never do.
Judging that Blair was finally ready, Headrin climbed on top and settled between her legs.
Blair, who had been blinking in a haze, snapped to her senses when she saw his large shadow looming over her.
As she met his feverish blue eyes looking down at her, she felt a heat so intense it felt as though she might be burned. It was the same presence that had been demanding attention for a while now.
The first night she had spent with him in her past life was sweet, but at the same time, painful. It was partly because it was her first time, but beyond that, the act itself had been far too overwhelming.
Remembering that pain, Blair’s body stiffened instinctively.
Noticing this, Headrin wrapped her legs around his waist and whispered lowly.
“Relax. It’s alright.”
The naive Blair of the past would have believed those words, but the Blair of the present knew better.
A lie.
Those words were a blatant lie. They were the sweet whispers of a devil trying to make her let her guard down so he could devour her.
Even so, knowing his true intentions, she could not bring herself to push this cruel and beautiful devil away.
As Blair hesitated, neither relaxing nor pushing him away, Headrin kissed her again and pressed his body closer.
At his deliberate actions, Blair’s body ignited. Noticing this, Headrin pushed into her—slowly, yet without mercy.
At the unfamiliar pain, Blair reflexively arched her back. But Headrin’s arms pulled her waist in, dragging her toward him.
Deeper, further inside.
Headrin gritted his teeth and let out a ragged breath. His patience was already at its limit just waiting for her to settle.
Though, the woman who had driven him mad seemed not to have the slightest inkling of what a tremendous amount of restraint he was exerting.
Throwing aside all that nonsense he had spouted earlier about a “good relationship,” he simply wanted to satisfy his own desire, which was on the verge of exploding.
In the end, Headrin lost his reason and began to drive into her. Blair’s vision swam, and she bit her lip.
Soon, this strange yet familiar act began to awaken sensations that her body had forgotten, but her subconscious remembered.
Blair couldn’t even breathe properly amidst that dizzying sensation. Seeing her like this, Headrin narrowed his eyes.
“Breathe, Blair.”
A rough voice, as if scraping his vocal cords, echoed in her ear. Yet, contrary to his words of concern, he moved even more violently.
In the haze of her fading consciousness, Blair instinctively pulled him close. Knowing that the devil tormenting her was indeed him, she still couldn’t help but hold him.
In this moment, only the two of them existed in this world.
Finally reaching the end, Headrin cooled the heat in his body, taking in the sight of the woman sprawling in his arms.
The woman who had fully embraced him was beautiful.
She had an objectively pretty face—a fact he had never disputed, though it had never held much sway over him before.
But in this moment, the fact struck him anew.
The way she looked so pale, as if carved from moonlight; her damp, violet eyes; her lips, swollen and red from his biting; even the sound of her calling his name while on the verge of tears—everything was lovely.
……Damn it, truly.
For a moment, he even forgot whose daughter she was.
He felt a surge of self-loathing at his own state. Yet, the thirst for this woman remained unquenched. He couldn’t stop.
This emotion is merely a momentary desire.
Once he holds her until the night bleeds away, these ridiculous thoughts will surely cease. Like snow melting and vanishing into the night.
Thinking this, Headrin held her once more.
“……Headrin?”
Blair, blinking through her dazed eyes, belatedly realized the situation and struggled, but it was useless.
Headrin felt a strange sense of fulfillment in seeing the woman clinging to him again.
His solid, massive body became a prison, locking her in, devouring her like a starving beast.
All through the long winter night, without a moment’s rest.
Buried in that bottomless quagmire of dizzying pleasure, Blair kept repeating only one thing to herself.
Do not forget, Blair.
He does not love you.
* * *
“Uun…….”
Feeling the sunlight dancing on her eyelids, Blair lifted her heavy lashes.
As her blurred vision cleared, the view of the room—at once strange and familiar—came into focus.
It was the bedroom of the Duchess of Del Marc, where she had stayed before returning to the past.
The moment she saw the scenery, she almost mistook it for having merely dreamed of returning to the past, but the absence of the child’s toys and belongings that had always occupied the room brought the reality crashing down.
Furthermore, the dull, throbbing pain throughout her entire body proved that the second first night she had spent with him was no dream.
‘Even if the memories remain, the body has returned to the past, so this is only natural.’
Just like when they first spent the night together—no, actually, her body felt far heavier and more pained than it had then.
Even when she had fallen into a shallow sleep out of sheer exhaustion from the merciless, dizzying pleasure, Headrin had not let her go. He had acted as if she owed him something.
Blair had drifted in and out of consciousness like she was fainting, and her final memory was of his broad back as he moved away from her in the grey light of dawn, leaving her to sleep alone.
Only then, seeing that back, did Blair realize the truth.
‘So this was your true intent.’
How desperate he must have been in her past life, keeping vigil by her side until morning, all to wring the truth out of her.
And how naive I was to have believed it.
Only after miraculously returning to the past had she finally encountered his true heart, which was colder and more bitter than she had imagined.
But she felt relieved. She would no longer need to carry the guilt of using him for her own purposes.
Calmly putting her emotions in order, Blair forced her heavy, leaden body to rise and pulled the velvet bell rope.