Chapter 14

As if afraid Gayeon would leave, he laced his fingers firmly through hers, tightly entwining them.

“Do you not think at all about diplomatic issues?”

Since it was, in any case, a matter concerning Gayeon, he had hoped she would not hear it, but the fact that Kiril was acting like this meant he did not care.

In the end, Anton ran a hand through his hair and criticized him.

“There have always been diplomatic problems, so why add one more on top of that?”

It was obvious he had intended this from the beginning.

If he had simply killed the woman, they could at least have erased their traces perfectly or denied it.

But the moment it became known that the woman was in Russia, it would turn into a diplomatic issue from then on.

“You talk like that because it’s not your probl—”

“That it would’ve been easier to kill her?”

With Gayeon right beside him, Kiril cut in sharply.

Anton, who had been speaking, looked stung at having been hit right where it hurt.

“Well, that……”

Anton’s gaze turned toward Gayeon.

Unexpectedly, her expression was calm.

“That’s true.”

After trailing off for a moment, Anton answered without denying it.

At that, Gayeon smiled faintly.

The way she did not waver even while hearing that there were people who wanted her dead remained in Anton’s memory in a peculiar way.

“A woman who said she would follow me wherever I go……”

Kiril smiled mischievously, yet sweetly.

He looked at Gayeon with a gaze soft enough to melt.

But both of them knew that this was by no means a sincere look.

“How could I kill her? It’s not as though I’m some murderer.”

At those words, both Gayeon and Anton let out hollow laughs.

Even Gayeon, who knew almost nothing about him, knew that Kiril was a man who could not be thought of apart from killing.

“His Excellency would laugh if he heard that. Did he explain why you came here?”

Anton looked at Gayeon as if asking whether she had heard a full enough explanation.

“……He said he wanted revenge for his pet.”

“A pet. Well, yes, I suppose.”

Anton replied with a bitter smile.

Kiril said nothing.

He merely pressed his thumb lightly against Gayeon’s warm palm, then tightened the hand laced with hers, pretending not to care.

“We’re planning quite a grand funeral, you see. Of course, Kiril probably didn’t explain it properly, but that’s the idea.”

“Though the only thing going into the coffin will be a single piece of flesh.”

Kiril added that with a cynical smile.

Gayeon could not understand the conversation between these men.

What she wanted was not some funeral, but Lloyd’s death.

“Since you’ve come all this way together, let me ask one thing of you, Miss Willis.”

“Yes.”

“Please don’t catch His Excellency’s eye. Even if you do happen to meet him, um……”

Anton found himself at a loss over how to introduce the woman at Kiril’s side.

At the very least, there had never been a woman beside Kiril before.

If it were learned that there was, he was the sort of person who would lock them both up without caring about anything else and tell them to make a child at once.

“Um……”

Anton kept letting out low groans of hesitation.

“……I don’t know. Did you maybe come back alive with Miss Willis because you got an *rection?”

He lowered his voice at the word ‘*rection,’ but that did not mean it would not reach Gayeon’s ears.

“Who knows.”

There were surprisingly many people who knew Kiril had strange s*xual tendencies.

He only became aroused at the sight of blood, and before that, no matter what woman was sent to him, the flesh between his legs would not rise, to the point that the First Lady had even had him examined by a world-renowned physician.

Since he had told the woman beside him not to leave and was even holding her hand, Anton had wondered whether normal s*x might be possible for him, but hearing the answer, it did not seem so.

“There’s nothing between us.”

Gayeon explained their relationship to clear up Anton’s misunderstanding.

What had happened in the bathroom flashed through her mind, but the man before her would never think of that as s*x.

“Why not? I’ve learned what it feels like to put something into a hole.”

“What?”

“What?”

Anton and Gayeon both recoiled and asked at the same time.

Kiril, sitting with his legs crossed, holding Gayeon’s hand in one hand and a glass in the other, smiled and said it again.

“I’ve come to feel what s*x is like without having to shove my d*ck into somewhere.”

The face of Gayeon, who had remained calm even when they spoke casually of her death, flushed red in an instant.

Anton, whose main work was information analysis, quickly interpreted the situation.

He fell speechless, his face saying he did not know whether to greet this news with delight or discomfort.

Clink.

The glass broke easily in Kiril’s hand.

It was not as though it had been made of sugar, yet Gayeon, having witnessed glass shatter in a person’s hand, soon broke out in a cold sweat because of the man clenching it tightly.

Sharp fragments lodged all through his palm, and blood immediately began to stream down.

“Come to think of it, I liked that.”

The grotesque thought that had come to him the moment he looked inside Gayeon’s mouth was an image he now kept to himself.

“For now, I shouldn’t cut the throat of the first woman I’ve ever wanted to sleep with.”

There was no pain mixed into the man’s tone as he said he had driven glass shards into his own palm in order to become aroused.

Like someone incapable of feeling pain, he bent close enough to press his nose to the bloodied hand and inhaled its scent.

Then, as if merely holding one of her hands was not enough, he held that same hand out toward Gayeon.

“Ms. Angelica Willis, let’s sleep together.”

“……I’m truly sorry, Miss Willis.”

It was Kiril who had suggested it, yet it was Anton who apologized.

If she answered that it was all right, it felt as though that would mean she was agreeing to it, and yet if she refused, she had no idea how Kiril, whose eyes were shining as he looked at her, might react.

Gayeon slowly edged her hips backward.

Kiril watched that with a furrow between his brows.

When he pulled forward on the hand he was holding, Gayeon’s upper body was dragged along.

“Ah!”

“I think I could do it now. I already reacted. Ah, though I might not be able to finish. I tried rubbing until the skin was worn raw, and only the surface peeled. If it went inside, would I be able to?”

Anton had first looked at him as though he were insane, but now he had shut both eyes completely, turning away from the situation.

Gayeon looked to him for help, but unable even to meet his eyes, she had no choice but to look back at Kiril.

Holding her chin with his bloodied hand and turning her face, he forced the words out between his teeth.

“Where are you looking? I’m the one who said I wanted this.”

Kiril’s face had gone slightly pale, as though he were restraining something with effort.

His red lips kept repeating that word.

“What if I say I don’t want to?”

Kiril fell silent for a moment with a face that seemed to say he had never considered that.

When the man looked at her again with that breathtakingly beautiful face, Gayeon swallowed dryly.

Then she moved very slowly.

She showed the man each and every movement of her body so that he would not think she was trying to run away.

She lifted herself slightly from the sofa and, with the one hand not caught by him, gently tugged as if telling Kiril to stand up too.

Unexpectedly obedient, he rose from his seat and looked down at Gayeon, a full head taller than she was.

“Come here.”

As she moved one slow step at a time, Kiril followed, though with a frown.

She could feel Anton tracking it with curious eyes, but right now Gayeon focused entirely on the man before her, Kiril.

Like a keeper luring a savage beast into its cage, she slowly led him toward the bathroom.

“We’ve only known each other for a little over two days. Let’s wait until a little more trust has been built before doing that.”

Not knowing how this man might react if she rejected him outright, she soothed him as gently as possible.

“How much?”

“What?”

“How much trust? I’ve never built anything like trust with anyone. How is that supposed to happen?”

Even after saying it, Gayeon found herself thinking hard about the meaning of the word ‘trust.’

She felt that if she explained it to Kiril without fully understanding it herself, he would not understand it either.

“When I can fully believe that you will not kill me. And when Lloyd is definitely dead. If those two things happen, I think trust will exist.”

As she said that, she washed Kiril’s injured hand under running water at the sink.

The blood was still flowing.

It seemed to be because glass shards were still embedded in it, so Gayeon first pulled out only the larger pieces she could see with her own hand.

It had to hurt quite a bit, yet not even a faint groan escaped him.

“There are quite a lot of small pieces in there, so we need to go to a hospital.”

At Gayeon’s words, Kiril pressed his palm flat against the sink and rubbed it.

Right before her eyes, the shards she had not managed to remove dug even deeper into the flesh, and when she tried to lift his hand away, Kiril stopped her.

“You can just leave them buried like this.”

“What if one of the glass pieces works its way into a blood vessel?”

“Blood vessels are deeper than you’d think. If it heals over with the flesh like this, it’ll probably throb once in a while.”

She could not understand this man at all.

But the moment she heard what he said next, Gayeon let out a hot breath.

“Every time it throbs, I’ll remember the first time I wanted to sleep with someone.”

Before that, the wound where the glass had not been removed might fester.

But his words and actions, saying he would remember this day, were so extreme and strange that they made her heart race, and she could not bring herself to stop him.

Silently, she washed his hand once more in the water and wrapped it with a clean towel.

“We should ask the front desk to bring a first-aid kit so the wound can be properly wrapped……”

Before she had even finished speaking, Kiril pulled her into an embrace.

She could feel the frighteningly insistent weight of his arousal pressing against her lower stomach.

At least there was no blood in sight now, but before she could ask when that would go down, Kiril pulled away from her and dropped down in front of the toilet.

Urk!

Having had nothing but alcohol, he vomited up the contents of his stomach.

The same thing had happened at his own mansion.

Patting his back reflexively, Gayeon carefully asked something she had suddenly realized.

“No way…… does it go down when you throw up?”

After washing away the blood that stirred his desire and vomiting, did the arousal subside?

“That’s right. Not many people have noticed that, but you’re quite quick to catch on, Miss Willis.”

The answer came through the open gap of the bathroom door.

Anton was standing there, leaning against the tiled wall.