The two returned to the bedroom, leaving behind the storm-like commotion.
Meeting again in their nightclothes, they continued the conversation they had left unfinished.
They also drank the wine they had not yet properly savored.
“How far did we get? Ah, we need time to get to know each other.”
“You said one month, did you not?”
“I did. But that one month is not simply time—it is a measure of mutual bond and intimacy.”
It was called one month, but it meant it could take a year. It was a slightly wicked yet clever strategy.
“Then this is insurance.”
Lucent stripped off Aeplin’s negligee in one breath.
“What do you think you are doing?”
Aeplin, suddenly naked, curled up tightly.
Lucent coldly gazed at the woman who, to cover her bare body, had rolled herself into a ball and wrapped her arms around her knees.
He had to create something no different from having robbed her of her chastity so there would be no complications later.
Soon Lucent also threw off his robe.
“Aeplin.”
Despite the rough action, his voice was composed.
Aeplin hesitated greatly, then raised her head—and beheld an astonishing sight.
Lucent was holding out his hand to her without a stitch of clothing on.
“It is time to sleep. Let us go to the bed.”
“Must we really sleep naked?”
“Because this is our perfect alibi.”
“……?!”
“We had a love match, did we not? We held a grand wedding. So we must create a perfect alibi for the first night as well. There are many eyes watching us everywhere.”
It was nonsense even to his own ears, but he intended to play along with Aeplin’s cute little scheme.
Soon Aeplin shut her eyes tightly and took his hand.
Yet it was truly strange how vividly his naked body kept rising in her mind.
His broad shoulders, his expansive chest, his firm muscles, and his enormous…… um. That. Down to his sturdy arms and legs……. Not a single thing was unsightly.
Thus the two lay side by side on the bed, barely covering their bodies with a thin wool blanket.
‘Well, we are husband and wife. It is not strange.’
Rather, it would be stranger for a man and woman on a bed to be formally dressed in nightclothes. Like garments buttoned up to the neck, for instance.
In that moment, something she had read in a novel came to mind: that noble husbands, in order to continue the family line, would without consideration fall upon their wives, lifting only their skirts and doing the deed.
Even reading it had been so unpleasant. She was grateful that Lucent did not behave like the man in that novel.
Yet merely having taken off their clothes made her feel she had drawn one step closer to him.
Perhaps the clothing that adorned her body and concealed her interior had been a curtain between them all along.
Inside the well-made wool blanket was another world.
It was a space where only instinct lived, where cold reason and calculation did not reach.
The vibrating scent of apples stimulated her nose and paralyzed her thoughts.
Her entire attention was fixed only on being conscious of their naked bodies.
Even as her marrow felt chilled, it was as though ants were crawling over her whole body—it tickled.
Tense with the fear that the slightest movement would bring their skin into contact, she swallowed dryly.
Then Lucent, unlike his own heart, grew doubtful of his body’s response to Aeplin.
‘Have I ever slept with a woman?’
……No. He had lived writing out time in seconds, with only the single-minded determination to succeed, and had no leisure to look elsewhere.
There were many women who, for money, would have relieved a night’s lust, but he had not particularly wanted them.
For a perfect man of this era, it could not be anything but a blemish, but in exchange he had taken a woman of an excellent family as his bride, so he had received his compensation in his own way.
But he was at a loss as to what to begin with in order to create the alibi.
Then his mind flashed.
‘I must be perfect.’
How many hardships and adversities had he overcome in his life?
That he could not properly handle a single woman was something he could not allow himself.
So he turned his body without thinking and trapped Aeplin in his arms with his firm embrace.
“Lucent…….”
Aeplin’s startled eyes darted about frantically.
Of course, both her cheeks were flushed like red apples.
“For a perfect alibi.”
As his face slowly descended and covered Aeplin’s small, plump lips, the door of desire naturally opened, and red heat tangled into one.
At the moment when hot and sweet breaths mingled, rather, his complicated mind was purified, and only the desire for greater pleasure sprang up.
Aeplin’s lips were sweeter and more poisonous than the wine that had just wet his throat.
Enough to make his vision grow distant…….
In that moment, an unknown pleasure blazed like fire in both their hearts.
Soon the dense kiss ended, and the two gazed at each other.
“Is that the end? The perfect alibi?”
Aeplin asked Lucent in a shy tone.
“Of course not. This is only the beginning.”
He no longer lingered only on her lips.
He sucked eagerly at the slender white woman’s neck, savoring its scent, taste, and texture.
“Hn.”
Aeplin barely rolled her lips inward to hold back the moan about to burst out.
At the sensation of his lips, like a branding iron, pinching, licking, and caressing her neck, her nerves seemed to melt—it was ecstatic.
Then, without realizing it, she softly wrapped both arms around his neck.
Meanwhile, Lucent’s brain boiled at the moist and soft skin.
Was all women’s skin as plump and sweet as Aeplin’s?
Lost in a trance at the texture he was experiencing for the first time, he made red marks on Aeplin’s white neck.
Then his gaze swept over her naked body.
‘Damn it.’
Rage surged at her body, so beautiful it drew admiration.
Her breasts, neither too large nor too small, her figure with its supple curves, and her flawless, smooth skin had already made his desire enormous.
He had thought the one-month courtship period she proposed was of no great consequence…….
Only after pressing naked body to naked body did it feel as hopeless as an eternity.
Aeplin twitched each time his lips and breath brushed past her skin.
Lucent was neither too rough nor, for that matter, inadequate.
Her mind went white, and she was seized by the impulse to simply entrust her body to him.
‘So this is how good it feels?’
If caresses were this good, how amazing would sex be?
Rather, she wanted Lucent to boldly cross the line.
The very idea that human physical desire could be controlled by compromise and promise was foolish.
She came to realize that reason and desire were clearly entirely different systems, and an area difficult to control perfectly.
Lucent stopped moving before his reason disappeared.
The sinister desire of a man spreading through his whole body.
He wanted to roughly rummage into this small, delicate woman, ruin her, and feel a fullness of pleasure, but he did not want to become a petty man who ignored her request.
But one thing he was certain of.
Before long, he would be helplessly crumbling before Aeplin.
In that moment, Aeplin’s slender arms, which had been wrapped around his neck, dropped limply, and soon she, drunk on the wine, burrowed into Lucent’s arms.
‘She is weak to alcohol.’
He had thought she had a fair tolerance, drinking whatever was poured for her. But even that must have been her pride.
He liked that such an Aeplin had fallen asleep in his arms like a child.
Even if he did not know well what the fullness after sex felt like, he felt a great satisfaction in her simply being in his arms.
As Aeplin the woman, not as the daughter of Count Hapen…….
‘The husband is pushed onto the path of asceticism all night while the wife sleeps soundly…….’
Lucent did not let go of Aeplin, who slept with her face resting against his chest.
He felt no weight at all, yet her presence was like a thousand pieces of gold.
He hoped the first night, having created a perfect alibi in its own way, would end like this, but things did not go as he wished.
It was hard to govern the rough desires that surged up again and again.
As if to aid his patience, Lucent let out a deep sigh each time her small body moved.
‘She has a spiteful side.’
One month, was it?
He would have to repay her properly. By then, even if she wept and begged him to stop, he would never grant her mercy.
* * *
Aeplin woke to the light seeping between her closed eyes.
For a while, unable to move even a finger, she rolled only her eyes and surveyed her surroundings.
This was the largest and most luxurious bedroom in the Haven villa, transformed into a space entirely different from last night.
She had not expected the sunlight pouring down like a heavy rain to be so dazzling.
The sunlight illuminating the entire room made everything shine.
Then she realized she had been left alone on the large bed.
‘Lucent seems to have woken already.’
“Ah! My head.”
Aeplin clutched her head with her hand.
The wine she had drunk last night had been top-grade, but……. She was indeed weak to alcohol.
Still, the secret and stimulating acts she had done with Lucent last night came back to her in full detail.
‘How am I supposed to face him?’
Just replaying the memory made her face hot.
Then she suddenly came to her senses and flung off the blanket covering her.
‘It only went that far.’
Judging from the clean bedsheets and the absence of any particular pain in her lower body, it seemed Lucent had kept his promise.
She felt relieved, yet in one corner of her heart, there was also a sense of regret.
‘Should I be glad his self-control is so great?’
A man who drew an iron wall even in bed, so rational.
She could not gauge whether it was fortune or misfortune.
