Chapter 34

But Owen wasn’t joking. He walked toward Lea slowly. His shadow fell over her. Lea dropped her gaze to the floor. Owen’s hand moved unhurriedly to cup her cheek. His thumb traced a slow path beneath her cheekbone and across her cheek. It drifted downward toward her lips.

The touch was unmistakably intent. Owen bent at the waist and brought his face close to hers. Their breath mingled. It lasted only a moment, but Lea caught the heat gathering in Owen’s green eyes. Her heart beat faster. Whether from fear or…… something else, she couldn’t say.

“You said you need privacy. I don’t want to keep you here forever either.”

“……”

“Then doesn’t a child need to come along quickly?”

But the moment Owen said that, her heart went still again. He was right. All of this was for the sake of producing a child. There was no room for anything like a husband’s affection between them. Thinking it through that way, Lea felt a dull ache in her chest, but the shame of the situation itself faded.

Owen was unhurried. The ribbon came undone in one pull and an ivory cameo dropped to the floor. The gleaming buttons followed one by one as his fingers touched them. As her white neck was exposed, Owen let out a quiet breath. He slowly buried his face in her neck. He bit lightly at the prominent part there, and Lea felt herself flinch and draw inward.

“Ah……”

Perhaps because it was daylight, her body kept tensing. Lea hunched her shoulders and startled each time Owen’s hands moved across her skin. The sound of her dress falling to the floor made her jump. Standing in nothing but her thin undergarments, Lea went rigid, and Owen laughed with something like amusement.

“Why are you so frightened.”

“It’s, it’s bright out……”

“I prefer it that way.”

Owen pressed his face into the nape of her neck and murmured:

“It means I can confirm you’re here in front of me.”

It was a confusing thing to say, almost romantic. But Lea quickly cut off the faint stirring of expectation and excitement that tried to rise at those words. All of this was for the child she would give to Owen. A child who would live a different life from hers. A child who would live like Owen and become like Owen. That child would not have to submit to violence with nowhere to run, or worry about the bodies of the dead being bought and sold. Lea had resolved to leave before the child could recognize her. She wanted to go while the baby was still very small, so the child would grow up thinking there had never been a mother to begin with. She didn’t want to give a clumsy kind of longing or happiness. If there was no memory from the start, there would be no thought of having been abandoned. It was enough for Lea alone to keep turning over the empty space a mother had left behind.

“Ah……!”

Owen pressed his lips to her chest. Her br*asts rose and fell with every gasp. He could feel her heartbeat through his lips. Lea’s body kept tensing. In the daylight, Owen looked different from how he appeared in the dark. Brilliant golden hair was touching her chest. Owen’s hair was softer even than Lea’s.

A tongue moved out slowly and licked upward across her stiffened n*pple. Owen was moving deliberately slowly. The red tongue grazed the n*pple in a light, coaxing motion, and then Owen’s mouth closed around her br*ast all at once. Lea’s body, thinner than before and by any generous measure entirely without allure, didn’t matter to him. The person he was holding was Lea Fell. This woman was the very reason he had endured and kept going through all those long years. Whether she was thin or full, the only thing that mattered to Owen was that the woman gasping and writhing in his arms was Lea.

“Hnn, nn……”

“You like having this sucked.”

Owen tapped the hardened n*pple with the tip of his tongue and whispered with a hint of laughter in his voice. The sensitized bare skin tensed even at the breath that came with each word he spoke. Owen raised his hand, took the stiffened n*pple between his fingers, and twisted. Lea shuddered and swayed.

“You have to ask for what you want yourself.”

“O, Owen……”

“Beg me to s*ck it.”

Owen said it against her ear, still twisting the n*pple. The shameless demand made her face burn, and at the same time her lower abdomen clenched. Owen was right. He now knew exactly which parts of her, touched in which way, drew out the sounds he wanted.

Lea whimpered and twisted her neck. She had slumped without noticing and was now lying on the study sofa. Unlike Lea, who was bare, Owen was still fully dressed, but he didn’t stop working at her br*asts. He wouldn’t take them in his mouth, though. Given only an ambiguous pleasure instead of the satisfaction she already knew, her hips began to shift. When Lea’s eyes grew hazy, Owen parted his lips and let his tongue flicker near her chest.

“Go on.”

“I……”

“Come on, it’s almost there……”

That beautiful golden face looked unbearably obscene in that moment. The green eyes that were always cold and still blazed with a desire that defied description. Lea watched Owen’s tongue with something like intoxication and finally forgot her shame. She arched forward and pressed her own n*pple into Owen’s mouth.

“Ah, Owen……!”

Owen bit and sucked at the br*ast offered to him, as though he had been waiting for exactly that. A shiver ran through her with every light nip of his teeth. His hand moved now between Lea’s legs. He rubbed the already slick l*bia with the back of his hand, then pushed between them, and found her cl*t with ease.

“Hnn, nnhh, nn……!”

He pressed with his fingertip and rubbed, and Lea cried out and twisted her neck. Color rose quickly in her thin, pale skin. Her lower body shifted as though trying to escape, but Owen blocked it easily with his thigh. He kept rubbing, and gradually Lea’s hips began to rock up and down in small motions. It was a lewd and instinctive movement, like an invitation.

Fl*id had already run to the back of his hand. With his mouth on her br*ast and his fingers on her cl*t, Lea’s body, grown accustomed to pleasure over the course of many nights, came undone quickly. Owen pushed his fingers into her entrance without hesitation. Her entrance took them in at once, welcoming and yet working around them as though something were still missing. Inside she was wet and hot. Every movement made a slick sound. He curled his fingers upward against the ridged inner walls, and Lea buckled beneath him. Owen looked down at her, cheeks flushed and completely undone, gasping, and smiled. A satisfaction separate from desire flashed in his narrowed green eyes.

“I don’t think I even need to prepare you anymore. A few strokes and you’re already dripping. Aren’t you.”

“Ah, ah……!”

It was true. Being held nearly every night had made Lea’s body come undone with very little stimulation. Owen didn’t simply thr*st and finish. He enjoyed watching Lea fall apart and gasp beneath him.

Owen worked his fingers inside her carelessly for a few strokes and then withdrew them. Watching Lea whimper from just his fingers was enjoyable, but he wanted more now. He took out his c*ck, already thick and aching, and lifted Lea’s hips with one hand. Her entrance came into full view, open and working. The sight was dizzying. Even Owen’s steady breathing broke.

“Ah……!”

He thr*st inside in a single motion. Driving to the root all at once, a lewd sound rang out. It was the sound of his c*ck pushing through the wet inner walls. Lea’s mouth fell open and she stopped breathing. The pleasure that crept up to the top of her head made her vision swim. But Owen didn’t wait. He moved with the same urgency he had used to enter her.

“Hhaah, ah…! Ahnn, nn……!”

“What, hh…… you like having it buried here? Don’t you.”

He pressed the head of his c*ck downward near her cervix as he moved, and Lea’s hips lurched upward. It felt like her spine was being scraped with a spike. The rawness of the pleasure was overwhelming, consuming her whole body like pain. Lea’s mouth hung open and she could only cry out, and Owen laughed and kept pressing deliberately into that same spot. The way her walls clenched around him with every thr*st sent a sharp pleasure through him as well.

The thrusting continued. With his c*ck driving into the most sensitive spot over and over, Lea was nearly out of her mind. But Owen gave her no rest. The more she came undone and lost herself, the more a twisted satisfaction seemed to rise in him, separate from desire.