“Until I confirm it myself, I won’t believe anything.”

Leon roughly forced Adela’s knees apart with his strong hands and pressed his body deep between them. Instinctive fear washed over her, and Adela shook her head violently in resistance.

“…Don’t.”

What he was about to do had nothing to do with Ingram Kasvah. It was a desire directed at her, and her alone.

But Leon paid no heed to her protest and pressed his mouth to her secret flesh. Soon his hot tongue pushed mercilessly into her entrance.

“Ah…!”

Her hips jerked in a spasm at the sudden intrusion, and Leon pressed his large palm flat against her lower abdomen, pinning her down.

“Stay still.”

The sensation of his tongue dragging along her inner walls with a wet, slick sound left Adela unable even to m*an. She swallowed the sounds down.

The wound on her neck burned and throbbed with heat, but the sharp pleasure rising from below swallowed even that pain whole.

Leon licked up at her relentlessly, seemingly without tiring. After his persistent attention, clear slick seeped through the narrow gap and wet his lips.

‘I didn’t want him to see me like this.’

She didn’t want him to see her body responding to his tongue, and she struggled to break free from his grip, but her body was held fast and wouldn’t budge.

Her cl*t swelled hot and firm, and her soaked inner walls clenched and fluttered with desperate want.

“Le, Leon…”

Adela gripped his hair and exhaled a ragged breath. When Leon finally lifted his head, his lips were slick and wet.

“What do you think a slave’s duty is?”

His low question made Adela’s eyes tremble violently.

It was the exact same question she threw at him ten years ago, word for word.

Back then, when her enraged father raised a whip at Adela, Leon stepped in front of her and took the blows himself. As she applied medicine to his ruined back, Adela shed silent tears.

‘Leon, don’t you know a slave’s duty is absolute obedience?’

‘…I am sorry.’

‘From now on, never do anything like this without my permission. Understood?’

The price of defying her father, who wanted her to be a beautifully dressed doll, came back as pain tearing through Leon’s flesh. The memory of that moment pierced her chest in sharp, vivid fragments.

Adela bit down hard on her lip and forced out her answer in a trembling voice.

“Absolute obedience.”

Leon smiled with satisfaction at her answer. He slowly covered her body with his and let his low voice drift into her ear.

“Don’t think a little wound like this is enough to keep you away from me. I am the master who owns every part of you.”

Savage possessiveness rippled in his red eyes.

‘This is going a little differently from what I expected.’

Adela pressed her hands against the bed and tried to pull back, and the corners of her lips trembled faintly.

She succeeded in removing the nuisance that was Ingram Kasvah, but she at least expected Leon to show some concern for her injury.

But now he showed no sign of tending to her wound. He seemed fixated solely on satisfying his own desire.

“Kiss me.”

Leon commanded, and Adela raised her head and carefully pressed her lips to his, then pulled away. But he seemed unsatisfied. He dragged his tongue across his wet lips and smiled with a sharp edge.

“You are well past the age of adulthood. It seems we rolled around together quite indulgently two years ago as well.”

Adela drew a sharp breath at the sight of his twisted smile. She swore she wouldn’t be shaken no matter what insult he threw at her.

‘…But not this.’

The night he mentioned was the night she came of age.

The two of them spent a long time nurturing feelings for each other, yet always kept a clean line between them.

But that birthday, the night they became one beneath the moonlight, was as painful as it was precious. It was a promise above all others.

Flushing with humiliation, Adela tried to turn her face away, but Leon gripped her jaw hard and held it in place.

“You are my slave. Whether alive or dead, you cannot step a single foot away from my side.”

Leon stripped off his clothes roughly, as though making a declaration. The moment Adela saw the ugly scar crossing his firm chest, even the anger rising in her vanished.

‘Right. There must be deep misunderstandings built up between us.’

The cruel words he spoke now could not be his true feelings. She believed she knew him better than anyone, so Adela reached out a trembling hand to touch his scar. But Leon coldly shook her hand away.

Adela’s unprepared body shuddered hard. Leon kept his gaze on her and slowly pushed his hips forward.

“…Hah!”

A crushed cry burst from Adela’s lips. She took the remedy, but there was no way to keep her senses together under his relentless, merciless *ssault.

Adela clung to his body desperately as his hips drove into her like a storm. She felt like a ship about to run aground in a squall under the scorching heat he poured into her.

“Slower… slow, slowly…”

Even her barely uttered plea meant nothing to Leon. Instead he roughly turned her body over and made her raise her hips.

Adela struggled to brace herself against the bed, her limbs trembling weakly.

Leon seized her pale, round hips in both hands and kneaded them, then commanded in a voice thick with desire.

“Keep quiet.”

“…Hng.”

Forced into a humiliating position, heat rose all the way to the top of Adela’s head. This was not f*replay, nor lovemaking. It was nothing but one-sided violation, no different from animals mating.

As his thick, hot tip pressed insistently between her hips, desperate m*ans scattered from Adela’s lips. Then Leon ground out a low voice.

“You said you wanted a child? I’ll grant your wish.”

With that cold declaration, Leon dragged himself roughly along her and forced his way through the narrow, quivering gap in one deep thr*st.

“…Ah! Too, too deep…!”

She gripped the bedsheets to keep from falling apart, but now only cries close to screams tore from Adela’s lips.

Leon drove into her without mercy, looking ready to leave red handprints across her white hips.

Explicit sounds of friction filled the bedroom, and the sharp smell of s*men mingled with the stale smoke of cigarettes.

‘I have to keep my head. I can’t fall asleep…’

She had to let go of any expectation that he would mercifully wash her body clean, the way he did the night before.

Adela strained her eyes to hold onto her fading vision, but the endless waves of unfamiliar pleasure and overwhelming weight finally pulled her under, and she fell asleep like she fainted.

“……”

Leon, driving into Adela like a storm, stopped the moment he saw her body go limp.

He quickly reached out and brought his fingers to the tip of her nose, checking her breathing first. Adela, collapsed and asleep on the bed, didn’t stir at all.

“…Hah.”

His desire hadn’t subsided. It still pulsed roughly. He forced himself to look away, climbed off the bed, loosely pulled on a robe, and headed to the bathroom.

He came back shortly with a basin of warm water and a dry cloth.

He held the wet towel and stared down at her face for a long moment. Her pale forehead, visible through her tangled hair, looked painfully fragile.

Leon began carefully wiping away the traces of desire left on her body, handling her like the most breakable jewel in the world.

As he moved the towel and reached the wound on Adela’s neck, Leon’s jaw went rigid.

“…How dare she.”

Letting Ingram go alive came back to him as belated regret.

He took out the ointment he prepared in advance, but his fingertips hesitated in the air, unable to apply it right away. Leon sat at the head of the bed, and his shadow stretched long over Adela.

A moment later, his fingers moved carefully, keeping time with the steady rhythm of her breathing. It was an utterly tender touch, layering ointment gently over the wound.

Adela furrowed her brow in her sleep, perhaps bothered by the touch, and Leon startled and quickly pulled his hand back, afraid she would wake.

“If you get hurt again without my permission, I will never forgive it.”

Rooted to the head of the bed, he looked down at the sleeping Adela and whispered very quietly.

The voice he let out was cold beyond measure, but his gaze never left the reddened skin around her wound.