56

“Who told you to turn your back on me. You may have started this, but I’m not done. I haven’t finished, so where do you think you’re going.”

He raised his voice, quite worked up.

“Whatever great thing you have left to say, say it. I’ll hear every word.”

Klen pressed in with clear intent, holding her with a stubbornness that said he would not let go. Lavian read him and let out a quiet sigh.

“Let’s do this…… outside.”

“I’m telling you to do it now. Can’t let those noble feet make a wasted trip.”

He pushed until she had nowhere left to retreat.

He forced out of her the words she had been trying to put off a little longer.

“If we’re going to pass off a child as yours, we’ll need to keep showing that the marriage is working. I’ll go along with that. But whatever was said between you and my father, I’d rather Lena not end up in the bed I sleep in.”

There was nothing in Lavian’s voice but resignation. Nothing else.

She would have no say in the matter, and if she had to accept another woman’s child, she needed to be clear about this one thing.

Her father had been hinting at expectations for Lena, and Lena had been making regular visits to his company. Klen hadn’t stopped her either, which made it all the more pressing.

“Hey!”

Fire lit in Klen’s eyes. He had wondered what she was going to say, and his wife had, as ever, a talent for making him lose his mind.

“It would be strange for sisters to share a bed.”

Klen had snapped at her, but she spoke with complete composure.

The way she killed her emotions was quite elegant, and it made her look as though she were looking down on him with indifference.

“Ha!”

“There are already rumors going around about you and Lena. Assistant Amelia might actually be the better choice.”

Lavian said the words that cut both him and herself, and resolved never to hope for a child again, never to want anything from him.

Her voice, sinking quietly into itself, seemed to make the carefully humidified bathroom feel damp.

And Klen completely lost his head at her manner.

“You really do drive a person mad.”

He grabbed Lavian and shoved her into the bathtub.

“Eek!”

A sharp scream filled the bathroom, followed by a loud splash as she was pulled under.

“Cough!”

She came up sputtering, flailing her way out of the water. Her nose stung sharply and she screwed up her face, heaving her chest to catch her breath.

Klen showed no mercy.

“If you don’t want your sister in your bed, you’d better try harder.”

He had already shed his robe and settled into the bathtub. He spoke in a cold voice, slid his hand into the back of her hair, gripped it, and brought his lips against hers.

She had just been drawing in a breath when he came at her, and Lavian pushed at his shoulders as though struggling to get free, but Klen didn’t move the way she wanted.

He only kept going, relentlessly and then more relentlessly, as though he intended to take every last breath from her.

“Hah.”

Lavian finally broke free and gasped, pulling in a lungful of air. But it didn’t last.

Klen followed her turning head with something like obsession and swallowed her lips again. As though she would never escape his grasp.

“Wait……”

He stole all her breath and pulled down her soaked dress. Under his hands, the indoor dress gave way in an instant, baring her undergarments and then her bare chest to the air.

Klen lowered his head and bit down on her soft br*ast without restraint. The pain was far from pleasure, and Lavian let out another cry.

“Ow! What are you doing.”

“Helping you live up to my expectations.”

The arrogant face released a low, rough voice.

Lavian felt so bewildered she almost laughed.

“This really isn’t the time for this.”

He moved his hand roughly and rubbed the place he had bitten hard. Lavian’s face twisted, and Klen murmured in a voice that held a faint smile.

“You really are so pretty I could eat you up. I’d like you to know that.”

“There’s no need to go this far. How much do you……”

“What. Are you going to scold me for being vulgar?”

“I could certainly say that about this.”

“So what if it’s vulgar.”

“It doesn’t look good. That sort of thing.”

This woman really only ever sees one side of things.

No matter how high she holds her head and pretends to be above it all, she’s already rolling in the mud.

“You only know one side of things. Who looks at you as the noble daughter of a count’s family now?”

“……”

“Do you really not understand that the moment you started sharing a bed with me, you became no different from the lowly me?”

Klen curled one corner of his mouth and whispered, soft and burning. His breath stirred against her ear, and Lavian found herself gripping his forearm without thinking.

I’ve never thought of you as lowly. If anything, I’m the pathetic one, with nothing to my name but family pride. Who am I to judge anyone’s standing.

But as always, Lavian was too busy hiding to let any of it show. Afraid her feelings for him might slip through, she suppressed her true thoughts even harder and kept her expression in check.

The way she always did. She killed the feeling, wore a blank face, became a doll, and erased herself.

“Do as you like. Just leave me at least one way out.”

Lavian yielded and went limp, but the indifference that said he wasn’t worth engaging with only stoked Klen’s irritation again.

She gives up her body but keeps her heart from everyone.

No matter how much he trampled her body, her heart stayed untouched.

She’ll end up crying under me anyway, so who does she think she’s impressing.

“There’s no wine to spill on a dress here. How exactly were you planning to escape?”

“How did you……”

A smirk settled on Klen’s lips.

At the same moment, Lavian’s color went slightly pale.

So he had known all along that her retreat that time was deliberate. Embarrassed, she started to ask how he knew, why he knew, and stopped herself.

Instead of asking, she turned her head to the side and muttered quietly.

“I should have killed you off the way you suggested this afternoon.”

So this is what it feels like to be a cornered mouse.

Perhaps she was sulking at him for not understanding her heart. Even while she was straining with everything she had not to let it show.

Either way, Lavian said something sharper than she normally would have. She may not have realized how cutting it sounded, but to Klen it looked no more threatening than a cat hissing.

Is that really the best she can do, he thought, and smiled faintly as he spoke.

“You shouldn’t say that yourself. Wait, you’re not actually plotting something, are you. There’s been a rat following me around lately.”

Klen said it casually, but Lavian couldn’t match his ease.

Her grandfather had died from an attack.

Someone following him. That could be dangerous.

Forgetting entirely what had just been happening, Lavian’s eyes went wide.

“I have a lot of enemies.”

Klen brushed it off as nothing, but the turmoil in Lavian’s eyes was real. She faced him with a serious expression.

Her color had gone slightly pale, and Klen let the amusement drop from his face and looked at her with cool arrogance.

“You can’t kill me anyway.”

Klen lifted Lavian’s hand and brought it to his throat. His voice was rough and fractured, as though telling her to squeeze with everything she had.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Then try.”

He said it boldly and brought her other hand to his throat as well. The absurdity of the moment was written clearly in both their eyes.

Only the sound of their breathing and the occasional drip from wet hair broke the quiet of the bathroom.

He always ends up doing this to me.

She had been taught to hide her true feelings. She had grown up being told it was better to have no highs or lows in her emotions. So why did she keep ending up like this in front of him.

“I really hate you.”

The truth she couldn’t hold back slipped out and hovered at her lips. She gently removed her hands from his throat.

Klen gripped her wrist with a little pressure and said:

“In a moment like this, you twist with everything you have. No hesitation, no holding back. Squeeze as hard as you can.”

“What on earth are you teaching me.”

Lavian trembled as though she had broken a rule, pulled her captured hand away with surprising force, and shoved his shoulder.

Klen thought the embarrassment spreading across his wife’s face was quite worth watching. All the effort of poking at her while living together had paid off, he thought.

The feeling of her being colored by him.

He looked at her with an arrogant expression and a cool smile.

“At least shove me hard like that. Who knows, maybe I’ll crack my head open and die.”

“Even if you taught me that a hundred times, I couldn’t do it a hundred times. I have no intention of learning that.”

“I gave you the chance. You let it go. If you’re going to hire an assassin, you’ll need someone quite skilled.”

“Really!”

Lavian stared at him, unaware of what her own face was doing.

Klen looked at her sharpened eyes and had a rather wicked thought. She responds so faithfully to everything I say. Should I create more moments like this going forward?

He dismissed Lavian’s glare as nothing more than a cat with its claws out and looked at her steadily.

“You said you wanted a child. Focus on that for now. If it works tonight, I’ll be happy to raise it.”