She tried to pull herself together, but her lips trembled faintly with grief. A sob slipped through the corners of her mouth, and Leon bent down and roughly lifted her chin.

Their eyes met in the air between them, and his lips pressed down onto hers.

“Mmph, Leon…!”

Her tears weren’t even dry yet. Adela moaned and shook her head, but he wrapped his hand around the back of her head and pushed deeper.

Leon’s ragged breath swept through her mouth and left an intense heat behind.

Adela struggled, yet couldn’t shake him off completely. She wanted to push him away, but the instinct to press closer to Leon tangled with it and left her dizzy.

Leon caught her trembling and explored her lips even more relentlessly. Like he would never again allow Adela to refuse him.

Where their tongues met, tears and saliva mingled together.

“Shh, stop crying.”

A moment ago he was kissing her roughly, and now Leon’s voice soothing her was strangely careful. He swept over her wet eyes.

Leon carefully pulled back and unwound the cloth wrapped around Adela’s foot.

“It’s all right. The bleeding seems to have stopped.”

She tried to pull her ankle free from his grip, but Leon wouldn’t allow it.

“Stay still.”

“…Ow, it hurts.”

He gripped the wound too roughly, and a m*an slipped from Adela’s lips. Leon lit the candle on the nightstand and examined her foot closely.

Perhaps a piece of glass was still in there.

A stinging sensation made Adela’s brow furrow. Leon glanced up at her expression for a moment, then opened his mouth with cool composure.

“Run from me one more time and I’ll put a chain around your neck.”

Adela bit her lip, unable to bear the hands probing her wound. Ignoring her reaction, Leon carefully applied medicine and wrapped the foot in a clean cloth.

“I have no plans to take another concubine for the time being, so you are not allowed to get hurt or fall ill.”

Free from Leon’s grip, Adela shifted to the corner of the bed and pulled her knees to her chest.

On the first day she realized she returned, she believed everything would be different. But now she wasn’t sure.

“Come here.”

Leon leaned against the headboard and beckoned.

She wanted to refuse, but his blank expression as he watched her held an anger she couldn’t read.

Adela leaned forward and moved toward Leon, and he snatched her arm and pulled her up onto him.

The embarrassing position made Adela’s face flush red, and Leon pushed his fingers up along the wet inside of her thigh.

His fingers slowly traced the tender skin of that flushed, heated place, and Adela shivered finely.

“I’ll give you what you want.”

“…What do you mean by―”

“This time, you move.”

The moment she understood what Leon was asking, her face went scarlet. The thought alone was mortifying.

Adela carefully shook her head, and Leon gave a strange smile.

Leon pulled her waist toward him and pressed her flush against his firm chest. Leon’s heart pounded roughly through the bare skin between them, the beat carrying directly into her. The heat, like being burned, made Adela tremble finely.

“Do I need to show you what to do?”

His low voice reached her, and an unbearable sense of humiliation took hold of her.

“…Please, Leon.”

He then seized her hips like he meant to crush them and drove her down onto him.

“…Ah!”

Adela lost her balance and swayed, and Leon lifted one of her legs with a firm hand and wrapped it around his waist.

It was a careful gesture, keeping her injured ankle from scraping against the rough bedsheet.

Adela drew a sharp breath and clung to his shoulders. The hard, heat-radiating flesh inside her grew heavier and fuller with each passing moment.

The overwhelming pressure made her grip on him tighten on its own, and Adela exhaled a ragged breath.

“Leon, a little gentler.”

The lingering heat from before doubled the sensation. Unable to bear the unfamiliar heat filling her to the deepest place, Adela twisted her hips.

“Isn’t this what you wanted, Adela Valent?”

Leon asked in a low, hoarse voice, tightened his grip on her waist, and drove up into her without restraint.

Heat flared across every place their skin touched, like fire catching on a dry field. Leon’s rough breathing rang in her ear and Adela felt her mind going blank.

Forgetting both the tears and the pain, it felt as though only the two of them remained in the world.

Adela dropped her head, and he roughly caught her chin and lifted it. Leon swept her hair out of her face with a rough hand and forced her eyes to meet his.

“Look straight at me. See who it is that’s inside you right now.”

The utterly crude words made Adela’s jaw go rigid. But Leon seemed to relish her shame, staring into her tear-filled eyes with relentless focus as he pushed deeper into her.

“…Ah!”

Before the cry could fully escape, Leon pushed Adela down onto the sheet.

He roughly bent one of her legs and hooked it over his shoulder, then tore away the torn threads of the stocking still barely clinging to her thigh. With a rough scraping sound, Leon’s hot lips pressed down onto the white skin laid bare beneath.

Leon studied Adela’s undone state with unrelenting focus. Her hair scattered wildly across the linen sheet, and red marks branded into her collarbone like a seal.

Leon drew a ragged breath and slowly pulled back, then drove back in with a force that felt like it could break her. The wet sound of friction filled the quiet bedroom, and he lowered himself and bit into her neck with relentless focus.

Pleasure beyond what she could handle kept crashing over her, and Adela felt something close to fear.

“…Ah!”

The moment she finally reached her peak, Leon pulled away from her completely.

Adela swallowed her cry and gripped the sheet tight. Her legs, held taut until that moment, collapsed in an instant.

Leon pressed her trembling, shuddering thighs down firmly. The evidence of his release ran cold across them.

A moment later, Leon lay down beside her and slowly brushed the hair plastered to her forehead with sweat out of her face.

Then he pressed his dry lips briefly against her still-flushed eyelids.

“Don’t forget what I said.”

“……”

Her head was too scattered to make proper sense of his words. Adela stared at him with blank eyes, and he slowly sat up.

“That you can’t even get hurt without my permission.”

Leon left those cold words behind, pulled on his robe, and disappeared into the sitting room connected to the bedroom.

Left alone and bare, Adela let out a sigh of shame.

“…Hah.”

She picked up Leon’s shirt from the floor and pulled it on loosely, then stared at the ceiling with unfocused eyes.

‘Does he not want a child?’

Everywhere Leon’s hands touched still burned, and her breathing still hadn’t settled.

“I wonder when he’ll believe my sincerity.”

Adela rose from the cold bed. Leon’s harsh words left raw marks on her heart, but there was no time to sink into heartbreak.

‘Leon, even if you curse me, I will protect you this time.’

A sharp light settled in her eyes as she straightened the collar of the rumpled shirt.

It was time for the gold coins she passed to the information guild to earn their worth. She needed to move before the Emperor’s blade turned toward them.