She quickly settled onto the sofa in front of the nightstand and poured the wedding wine from the bottle into the empty glass before her, filling it until it nearly spilled over.

Glug―

The sound seemed to bring a sense of calm to the unease that had plagued her all this while.

Luna, who had been rigid with tension throughout the entire day, lifted the glass in her grip and drank it down in one go.

The hot, bitter liquid scorched her throat in an instant, sliding down with a gulp. A sharp, bittersweet taste spread across her mouth. Today had been full of firsts, one after another.

Having tasted alcohol for the first time, Luna soon felt the tension ease a little, and she drank again and again.

The stiffness in her fingertips, the pounding of her heart that had seemed to forget its purpose all day long, all of it gradually began to feel pleasantly warm.

Before she knew it, she had become so absorbed in the act that she didn’t even hear the door open.

* * *

A faint weariness lay across Caesar’s face.

His handsome brow was drawn together in a slight furrow.

An unwanted wedding. The hollow congratulations of the nobility. All of it served only to bore him.

To Caesar, today was nothing more than another ordinary day, no different from any other. Only a little more tiresome and unpleasant.

He had always lived that way. Under the emperor’s watchful suspicion and the scrutiny of the nobility, he had learned not to escape the board he’d been placed on, but to find a way to survive within it. This marriage was no different.

There was no chance the emperor had chosen his bride without some ulterior motive. He had no way of knowing what orders the woman had been given, or to whom she would report everything she saw and heard going forward.

The reason this marriage displeased him was not that he found his partner objectionable. What displeased him was the simple fact that he had to keep her closest to him, under the name of Grand Duchess, even knowing she was the most dangerous trap of all.

He recalled the moment, just a short while ago, when he had caught Adelia as she nearly stumbled while walking the aisle together.

She had worn quite the guileless expression, her eyes wide and round like a startled rabbit.

Ha. Guileless? That young lady?

She was a woman notorious among the nobility as a maker of scandals. Rumors of her loose dealings with men had always trailed behind her.

On top of that, this was a match the emperor, who held him in contempt, had pushed for with great enthusiasm. He had endured too much over the years to believe the intent was simply to humiliate him by marrying him off to a promiscuous woman. There was no telling what schemes the woman who had entered his estate might set in motion. The mere thought of it made his head throb.

It seems I won’t be able to let my guard down even at home now. Caesar let out a quiet, humorless laugh.

His steps had brought him to the door of the bridal chamber before he realized it, and without hesitation he reached out and turned the handle.

Click―

The moment the door swung open, what met his eyes was a scene entirely unlike anything he had expected.

On the nightstand beside the bed, a bottle and glass lay carelessly strewn about. The bottle had already been emptied nearly to the bottom.

Beside them, a woman sat slumped with her body half-leaning to one side, perched in a precarious, disheveled posture.

Her flushed face and glazed eyes told him plainly that she was quite thoroughly drunk.

Caesar paused for a moment at the sight of a bride so unlike anything he had imagined, then slowly approached and took a seat across from her.

On the first night of a marriage, the bride had drunk the wedding wine meant to be shared between husband and wife all by herself, and was now completely intoxicated.

Caesar arranged his features into his characteristic indifferent, sardonic expression and drew closer to the bride.

Upon noticing Caesar seated before her, Adelia’s expression slowly went slack.

Whether from the drink, her tongue was slightly tangled as she spoke to him.

“Oh… hello……?”

Her eyes blinked slowly as she recognized him.

Even in her drunken state, it was a greeting offered in an attempt to ease the awkward air between them. As he watched her offer this out-of-nowhere greeting, the corner of his handsome mouth twitched slightly.

“Just as I’ve heard.”

A troublemaker who drank and made merry without regard for time or place. The wild filly of high society. Hadn’t they also said she was quite fond of men.

A honeytrap, was it. Perfectly suited for prying out information. Smile at a man, whisper sweetly in his ear at night, and he’d spill everything he knew.

Truthfully, he had no desire to be in the company of a woman whose intentions he couldn’t read, but he couldn’t skip the wedding night. If he refused her, there was no telling what words would find their way back to the emperor.

He spoke with composure, calling to mind her outrageous past conduct.

“A bride drunk on her wedding night. Truly worthy of being called a wild filly.”

She blinked her eyes, which wouldn’t open all the way, and fixed him with a languid, unfocused gaze as she parted her lips.

“A wedding ceremony with the Grand Duke. Anyone who wasn’t nervous would be strange……. Hic.”

So she was saying she had drunk because of nerves.

Was even this calculated? One of Caesar’s eyebrows rose at a skeptical angle.

She picked up the empty bottle and shook it, but only the last remaining drops trickled out with a small glug.

In that instant, Caesar reached over and took the glass from her hand, setting it down on the nightstand with a sharp clack.

“You’ve had too much.”

“I only meant to have a taste since it was here, and then I just… Should I call a servant to bring another bottle……?”

Slightly slurring from the drink, she murmured the words as if to herself.

“Is there really any need for that?”

Without so much as asking her preference, he rose from his seat, gathered the drunk bride into his arms, and carried her toward the bed.

Loveless political marriage or not, his manner made clear he intended to get the business done without any conversation or exchange of feeling.

Luna, suddenly sinking into the soft bed, felt as though the drink had been shocked right out of her, and she spoke up in a rush.

“W, wait a moment.”

“Surely you’re not about to say something naive, Miss Wild Filly.”

The Grand Duke’s words carried a mocking edge, alluding to her colorful past.

It was hardly the sort of thing to be said to a bride who had just exchanged vows that very day, and who was wearing a negligee that left little to the imagination at that.

While a flustered Luna could only dart her eyes about, he moved faster.

Having misread what she meant to say, he had already stripped away the negligee that had been loosely draped around her.

It was undergarments that came undone with a single motion, so there was nothing particularly difficult about it.

With the things that had clung to her body now gone, her full br*asts swayed indecently.

Her flushed cheeks and bare body were laid bare beneath the moonlight.

Luna tried to cover her chest with her slender arms, but they barely managed to conceal her n*pples. If anything, the sight only appeared all the more provocative.

“So experience truly does show? You certainly know how to stir a man.”

The directness of his gaze was so intense that Luna was thrown into complete confusion.

“Th, that’s not it… Ah……!”

Caesar swept her arms aside without effort and took one rosy pink peak into his mouth, working it without mercy.

The heat of his mouth wrapped softly around her n*pple. The sight of his handsome lips closing around her br*ast was more obscene than she had expected.

He grazed the lewdly stiffened bud between his teeth and drew the *reola fully into his mouth, and Luna’s back arched sharply.

“Ha… Mmh……!”

The sudden shift in the scene left her bewildered for only a moment before the unfamiliar sensations came crashing in, leaving her no chance to collect herself.

Everywhere his tongue grazed felt as though it had caught fire. Luna squirmed, not knowing what to do with herself.

She grasped at the faint thread of reason still left to her and tried to push against his shoulder, but the gesture only seemed to encourage him.

‘Is this his preference?’

Caesar kept her saliva-wet n*pple in his mouth and bit down gently, just enough to tingle without hurting.

A sharp, electric pleasure spread through her entire body, as though it were seeping into every last cell.

It was nothing more than a n*pple held in his mouth, and yet it felt this good. With the drink still coursing through her on top of it, her mind blurred into a haze.

Caesar, who had been watching her reactions with careful attention, slowly dragged his tongue across her other n*pple and spoke.

“As expected. You’re quite sensitive.”

The slightest touch and she was already coming undone.

Thinking to himself that she was truly gifted, he slowly ran his hand down over her backside. Her body was so responsive it trembled at even the lightest brush of Caesar’s hand.

At last, his hand moved to Adelia’s most intimate place.

The most secret part of a woman. His hand reached the slick, wet warmth of her and rubbed against her entrance.

“Aah……!”

“You’re soaking.”

He had done nothing more than caress her br*asts, and yet she was already soft and ready below, as though all preparation had been made.

When he pressed a single finger into that parted warmth and she took it in smoothly, the corner of Caesar’s mouth curved.

“Hah……!!”

At the sudden intrusion, Luna snapped her legs shut.

But Caesar paid it no mind, rubbing and thrusting into her, working her open. Her slick inner walls clung to his fingers and fluttered around them.

At the sudden rush of intense sensation, she tried to escape it by lifting her hips, but each time she did, his fingers only drove deeper.

It felt as though tears might spill from her eyes.

A strange sensation she had never felt once in her life. Her slightly parted thighs trembled finely, as though they might give way at any moment.

Caesar explored her inner walls with careful, deliberate attention, as though conducting some manner of inquiry. His expression, in those moments, almost appeared grave.

The wet, slick sounds that leaked out rang unusually loud in the silent room.

His fingers, buried deep enough to swallow his knuckles, grazed a particular spot, and her hips jerked and snapped upward.

“…There it is.”

Deep within her inner walls, slightly to the right.

When Caesar pressed firmly against that faintly textured place, a rush of fl*id spilled out and her mind went white as a blank page.

“Ha… Mmh……! That… stop……!”

Luna, her eyes brimming with tears, gripped Caesar’s wrist hard.

Her legs fell open of their own accord, exposing her soft pink folds without concealment.

Her slick inner walls contracted and released around his thick fingers in a ceaseless rhythm of tension and release.

Even as she reacted so intensely, Caesar worked his fingers faster, thrusting and curling upward as though drawing something out from within her.

At the dizzying rush that crashed over her in an instant, her hips flew up into the air against her own will.

“Ah……!”

Luna bit down hard on her lower lip. Her wet lashes fluttered, and the corners of her eyes flushed red, and for a moment Caesar could not look away from the sight of her.

When her body at last went limp as though it could bear no more, Caesar slowly withdrew his fingers.

Even from those slender fingers, her flushed inner walls seemed reluctant to let go, clinging as they pulled away. Her impossibly sensitive body gave a small, startled shudder even at that slight motion.

As though the aftershocks had not yet fully passed, her slightly parted folds continued to twitch and flutter without pause.

As though craving something more, the sight of her was so sensual it could have bewitched anyone, and he felt himself grow heavy below without meaning to.

Just as the rumors had said, the side of her that lived up to the name of a seductress was on full display. Caesar, with a note of admiration, made up his mind. An unwelcome marriage it may have been, but she was the woman who would bear his heir going forward. If he was to keep her by his side regardless, he would uncover every last thing hidden within her. Whether through seduction, or by finding her weakness…

“Mmh…….”

Caesar, who had been turning over countermeasures out of habit, came back to himself at the sound of the woman’s m*an. For now, at least, her reactions did not seem to be an act.

Watching her openly provoke him, he spoke.

“No further preparation is needed.”

Caesar’s low murmur, as he slowly dragged his tongue across his lower lip, echoed in her hazy mind like a ringing in her ears.

A stretch of silence passed.

Through the fog of pleasure, she felt something blunt press against her below.