For a moment, her eyes wavered almost imperceptibly.

She had not expected that a genuine apology would ever leave his lips, always so cool and unyielding.

His suspicion of Luna as a spy had been with them from the very first day she arrived at the Grand Ducal manor.

Under any other circumstances she would have resolved to wring a proper apology out of him when the chance came…

Yet now that the words had actually left his mouth, strangely enough, she did not feel entirely relieved.

Perhaps it was because she understood, at least a little, the position he had been in that had left him no choice but to suspect people.

She could not explain why his halting apology stirred something that felt almost like pity.

Luna reached for the water glass beside her, wet her throat, and answered.

“It’s all right. These things happen to people. You know how hard it is to read someone’s true feelings just from what shows on the surface. I understand why you’d be so suspicious.”

“Do you really think that?”

“Of course.”

Luna gave a small nod as she answered.

In that moment, the atmosphere between them shifted in a subtle, hard-to-name way. A quiet warmth seeped in through the taut tension that had always hung between them.

The look in Caesar’s eyes as he gazed steadily at her face brought on an inexplicable unease, and she held her breath for a moment. Her mouth went dry for no particular reason.

Luna was turning her gaze away in embarrassment, staring off into empty air, when a servant quietly entered and began pouring a red liquid into the wine glasses. The wine bottle had a peculiar shape unlike anything she had seen before.

“What is this?”

“A celebration.”

Not long ago, when she had asked what he intended to do if her innocence was proven, this had been his answer.

Had Caesar truly wanted to trust her? The words he had let slip at the time drifted back to her.

‘How to make yourself trust someone you cannot trust. Isn’t that something you ought to be puzzling over, not I?’

Turning his words over in her mind, Luna brought the wine glass to her nose.

The ceremonial wedding wine she had drunk on the first night had left only a memory of bitterness. On top of that, the tension of the wedding night had left her no room to savor it at all. This time was different. Even before she tasted it, a faint fruity fragrance from the liquid in the glass was already reaching her.

She took a sip and let it rest in her mouth. The sweetness of ripe fruit seeped gently across the tip of her tongue.

Caesar, noting the way her eyes had brightened, spoke.

“It’s a wine made from lingonberries that grow only in the north. The fruit ripens in bitter cold, so the yield is extremely small. Only the berries that survive without freezing are selected and aged. The taste is quite exceptional.”

“It really is. It’s on a completely different level from what I had before.”

He was right.

The harmony between the sweetness that spread softly and the clean tartness that followed to nip at the tongue was extraordinary.

And to think he had personally had the servants prepare this wine. It still did not feel quite real.

Before long, sipping at what tasted less like wine and more like a sweet drink, she found the bottle had quietly run dry.

Luna’s heart beat fast and quick.

Whether it was the wine that had gone down so easily, or something else, she herself could not tell.

Buoyed by a quietly rising giddiness, Luna parted her lips with a bright smile.

“Still, this is lovely. Sharing something this delicious together.”

If before they had been in a relationship where she could not tell friend from foe, perhaps now they had become partners she could trust.

For a change that had come about in such a short time, it was a remarkable leap forward.

At last, Caesar’s lips, which had been watching her flushed face all the while, parted slowly.

“Now…”

“Yes?”

“I think it’s time we took care of what we’ve been putting off.”

“What do you mean?”

Something they had been putting off between them?

Luna tried to think back but nothing came to mind readily. She asked again with a puzzled look, and he answered without a moment’s hesitation.

“Making a child.”

At the words Caesar dropped so casually, Luna nearly spat out the wine she had been holding in her mouth.

A charged glance passed between them.

The air heated in an instant, and her face, already warm, seemed to flush even hotter. Luna fidgeted with the glass in her hand and spoke.

“How can you just say something like that so nonchalantly?”

“That we need to conceive an heir within a year. You haven’t forgotten. We’ve wasted time for reasons that couldn’t be helped, but there’s no longer any reason to keep waiting.”

“Even so, how can you say something like that with such a straight face…”

“Why not. This too is ultimately an extension of our contract, so think of it as a task.”

“Wh, who treats s*x like a task?”

“Or if not that… perhaps it’s more accurate to call it following one’s instincts.”

Caesar’s heavy gaze did not lift from her face. Simply sitting there meeting it made her feel, for no clear reason, as though she could not breathe.

Even when she turned her head, his eyes seemed to follow with relentless persistence, and she felt she could not escape him entirely.

And why did his lips look so red?

Without thinking, Luna raised her wine glass and took a sip. As she licked her lips, her throat moved with a small, visible swallow.

Her head grew hazier and hazier, the warmth of the wine rising steadily through her.

* * *

Each time the faint candlelight flickered, the shadow cast across the wall twisted into obscene shapes.

Luna was completely bare, without a stitch of clothing. Caesar had buried his face between her spread legs and was greedily devouring her.

“Ha… ugh…! Ah…!”

The quiet room filled without pause with Luna’s intermittent m*ans and the wet sounds of his mouth, and Caesar’s movements grew more and more explicit.

Luna trembled finely under the waves of pleasure crashing through her one after another, twisting her hips.

Caesar’s beautiful face watched her own with relentless intensity.

“S, stop…”

A trembling voice barely escaped her lips, but between her already ragged breathing and her heightened senses, even those words scattered into the air before they could land.

Then his fingers pushed in softly, and her hips jolted and arched up.

“Hah…?”

Luna’s folds, loosened completely, accepted Caesar’s fingers without any resistance.

“Look at how greedily it’s clenching. Seems like it’s desperate for something more.”

Just as he said, her entrance had been tormented for so long that it fluttered and quivered, slick with arousal that flowed without end.

Caesar examined her below with the air of someone conducting a thorough investigation, carefully tending to every slick crease.

Tears welled in her eyes and her breath grew short from the look in his eyes as he gazed at her so nakedly exposed, and from his fingers that found only the most sensitive places.

His long fingers, buried deep, began to move in rough strokes, scooping against her inner walls.

“Ahng…!! If you do it like that…!”

Luna’s mind went white and a dizzying wave of sensation crashed over her.

“The scent is overwhelming. I think you’re completely undone now.”

Whether all the wine she had drunk with him was coming out below, her entrance kept producing slick arousal that flowed endlessly.

She had lost all sense of how much time had passed.

It had begun as nothing more than a casual glass of wine, yet Luna had become entangled with him as though under a spell, and by the time she came to her senses she was already like this.

Luna tried to press her thighs together, tensing her legs, but they would not obey her.

If anything it seemed to have spurred him on, and the hand exploring her below only grew more relentless.

Squelch. Squelch.

Caesar’s obscene movements showed no sign of stopping and only pressed harder.

Every sensation in her body grew sharper, and the harder she tried to hold on, the more helplessly she was pulled toward the center of the pleasure.

Luna’s hips lurched up sharply and arched like a bow. Her lifted hips began to tremble and shake of their own accord.

“Ugh… hah…! Aaah!”

She had lost count of how many times she had reached her peak.

Luna could not suppress the cry that was half m*an, half scream, and let it out, and at the same moment her head snapped back.

Caesar watched with dark eyes as her wet lashes trembled and her bare body writhed through her cl*max.

In those eyes, luminous as though holding the light of eternal snow, an unreadable flame of desire swelled and surged.

She squirmed, mortified to be seen so undone, but the strength that had left her legs did not return easily.

The flushed flesh laid bare between her spread legs twitched ceaselessly before Caesar’s eyes, like something alive.

Under his gaze, fixed on that sight without so much as a blink, clear arousal seeped and trickled down.

Just as she was finally mustering the last of her strength to press her legs together against the belated wave of embarrassment, Caesar wrenched them apart again, and his soft, hot tongue met her once more.

“Ahh…!!”

There was not even a moment to catch her breath.

He gripped the soft flesh on either side with both thumbs, spread her open wide, and pressed his thick tongue deep inside her.