Chapter 33

Even though he had said he wanted an heir, until just a little while ago she had not been able to fully accept that he truly meant it. Throughout their entire marriage, he had never once allowed his seed inside her.

But now she was feeling the truth of those words with her body.

When what had been filling her lower belly withdrew all at once, her body gave a small jolt. The shaft that slipped out of Yvonne’s body glistened all over with lewd fl*id. That alone was startling enough, but the fact that it was still swollen just as before left Yvonne speechless.

“Ha… quite a lot came out.”

Just as Carlisle said, there was enough release inside that the convulsing fullness felt heavy. The fl*id stretched in a long thread from the tip, indecently so. Yvonne, who had been staring without realizing it, hastily turned her head away the moment her eyes met Carlisle’s.

Even when they had lived as husband and wife, Yvonne had never looked at his that closely. It was embarrassing, of course, but more than that, she simply could not believe that something that large had gone in and out of her body.

But more than that, once he was finished, he would leave the room without a backward glance, so she had never even had the chance to properly look at his body.

“I don’t particularly mind if you look….”

“That’s enough. We’ve done enough, haven’t we?”

Her throat, which had cried out for so long, stung.

Carlisle looked down at her as she let out heated breaths. He had bitten and sucked at her so much that her lips were plump and swollen. Just looking at them made arousal rise again.

“Now move away…. Mm.”

When Yvonne tried to slip out of Carlisle’s arms after he had finished, a thick arm came under her waist.

Yvonne, pulled close against Carlisle so tightly that her waist was almost lifted, raised her head, and heat invaded her lips. Their tangled tongues passed in and out of each other’s mouths, mixing wetly.

“Haap. Stop.”

The two hands that had tried to push Carlisle away were caught in one large hand and stretched high above her. The more their tongues ran wild and tangled messily as they traded saliva, the deeper the kiss became.

Had Carlisle always been this fervent about kissing.

She was confused. Even this fierce and rough intimacy of his was all a first to Yvonne. The way he stirred through her inner mouth and licked over her made her head spin. The heavy kiss only stopped when she had almost begun to think, absurdly, that she might suffocate like this.

“Haah…. Haah….”

It was Carlisle who caught Yvonne by the wrist and made her lie back down when she tried to sit up to wash herself. When a bewildered Yvonne tried to pull her wrist free, Carlisle only tightened his grip further and spoke.

“Where are you trying to go.”

“…To wash.”

Carlisle was the sort of man who would pull away the moment it was over, almost coldly. He was the kind of man who would go straight to the bathroom, wash away every trace of intimacy, and return to his own room, so Yvonne could only wonder why he was still here by her side.

“You’re planning to wash off everything I just put into your body?”

“That doesn’t mean I can just stay like this.”

“Not yet. Stay like this until morning.”

Carlisle wrapped his arm tightly around Yvonne’s body so she could not get up again. And as if that were not enough, he bound her from behind inside his solid chest as though she belonged to him.

Held in his arms after intimacy for the first time in her life, Yvonne awkwardly darted her eyes about, but Carlisle was stubborn.

“You really….”

Yvonne, who had been about to say more, let out a sigh. Not only because of the intense intimacy, but she still could not believe Carlisle was still in her bed.

Carlisle was pressed close against Yvonne’s back like a male leisurely enjoying the afterglow. Though they had lived as husband and wife, there were truly many things Yvonne had never done with Carlisle. Even something as simple as lying side by side like this without wearing anything was one of them.

“…It’s uncomfortable and awkward. I want to wash.”

She spoke because of the awkwardness. It was unpleasant that even her hips felt damp, but whether it was the emptiness left by the length that had filled her so completely now being gone, or the moisture still trickling down, her body trembled on its own.

“How particular. Just how bad could it be.”

Carlisle raised himself and, without warning, spread Yvonne’s legs. The hand that immediately began feeling at her s*x made Yvonne’s shoulders stiffen.

“Mm…. What are you doing now?”

Carlisle’s gaze shifted to the pink opening, still twitching faintly and still letting fl*id escape in little spills. Her hips, originally pale, had been rubbed so much they were tinged pink, just like Yvonne’s flushed face now.

With his index and middle fingers, Carlisle spread apart the trembling inner flesh himself. The tender flesh parted, revealing the narrow hole still pulsing from excitement that had not yet faded.

“I can’t let you wash away what I finally made you take.”

“Mm. Carlisle, just what are you….”

“I told you. I can’t let you go before I see a child born from my seed.”

Carlisle, reminding her once more of the terms of the deal, pushed the release that had flowed out back into the opening. Yvonne’s body trembled delicately at the touch.

Heat rose in his eyes as he stared at her limp body, marked with his traces.

To think that he would use this phrase, which the Earl had written down so forcibly, to his own advantage.

There was no man other than a husband who would want a woman carrying a child. And with similar odds, there were only rare cruel women who would leave behind a child born from their own body. Therefore, the chance of Yvonne leaving him was remarkably low.

That alone was enough for a sense of a victor’s elation to show in his dark gray eyes, and quite openly, desire flared there once more. The plump, swollen inner flesh twitched even when his fingertips barely brushed it, and it inevitably stirred a man’s instincts.

As proof of that, Yvonne’s eyes widened when she discovered that his member was hardening again. The ankles she had hurriedly tried to close were seized and spread wide.

“Carlisle!”

“The more times we do it, the better the chances.”

Fixing his gaze on Yvonne’s startled face, Carlisle wore a mean smile. Soon, his hot lips came down on skin that had not yet lost its warmth.

* * *

A lukewarm breeze tickled her skin. Feeling the light through her closed eyelids, Yvonne slowly lifted them open.

Morning.

Everything that had happened last night came back vividly. How she had taken him with her legs spread shamelessly wide, how she had moaned at the pleasure he had forced on her. Even Carlisle’s hot body temperature, as he had held her limp self in his arms and breathed roughly after the several times that followed, remained clear in her memory.

Blankly, she took in the golden ceiling painting that entered her view. For three years, the first sight she saw every single day was not her husband’s face, but the golden ceiling painting depicting Saint Kristin holding a baby angel in her arms.

Yvonne, who had until now looked at the baby angel in that painting without feeling, slowly closed and opened her eyes.

The place beside her, when she turned to look, was of course empty. She had been startled by the sight of the man sleeping beside her for the first time last night, but it seemed he had returned to his own room in the middle of the night.

For a very brief moment, she had thought perhaps she was dreaming of the past, but then the fragments of memory steadily piled together and she realized reality.

“I really did come back.”

To the Polshared ducal residence.

To Glade Hills.

Into her sluggish mind, memories of last night came flooding back.

‘The divorce was never finalized.’

Even in the somewhat frequent intimacy of their early marriage, he had never once released inside her, and as though it were not a husband and wife’s relation but merely an act of easing desire, he would go back to his room without saying even a single word.

There was no reason to feel newly disappointed.

And yet last night, for the first time, he had allowed his seed inside her and then fallen asleep right beside her.

Perhaps because sharing sleep together was something they had never done before, it had felt unfamiliar to her, while unlike her, he had slept as though he had always done so and then left the room early at dawn.

She watched the curtain fluttering softly through the slightly open window, then turned her eyes. On the bedside table she happened to see a wedding ring lying in pooled sunlight. The ring she had thrown somewhere last night to show she had no need for it had been placed there neatly.

To begin with, he was not a man who assigned meaning to a wedding ring, so there was no way he had personally retrieved it and set it there. She was about to look away, thinking a maid must have come in while she slept and placed it there, when she suddenly saw the crest engraved in the center of the ring.

The black wolf, the crest of the Polshared Dukedom.

In Aerondo, the capital, the habitat of the black wolf, a ferocious beast almost impossible to see, was the Kalau mountain range. It was a region that took a full five days by carriage to reach, but the mountain range extending from the roots of the Kalau mountain range, the center of that place, touched the far outer edge of Aerondo.

A rugged mountain range where, even in midsummer, the snow of deep winter remained unmelted from the middle slopes upward. It was said that black wolves lived there in packs.

‘It’s the black wolf, our family crest. It looks frightening, but they say it’s an intelligent beast that hunts in packs and has the tenacity to never give up.’

For an instant, the voice of the youthful boy who had told her that circled in her ears.

Yvonne gave up on the idea of getting out of bed and curled onto her side. Curling in on herself, she closed her eyes tightly. She knew she needed to make a new plan, yet she had no desire to get up, and no energy either.

Because everything had become a mess.

‘Tell him you’re waiting for the man coming from Kalau.’

Once again, the boy’s voice sank into her ears, and a smile escaped her without thinking.

‘Let’s make that our code.’