Chapter 45. Contract, or Trap (2)

“To recover your memory, it’s important to visit that place frequently first. Until now, you haven’t even passed by it.”

Iella, who had been subtly pulling her body back due to the close distance, stopped and blinked. ‘Is that all?’ She had expected him to demand more, but surprisingly, it was nothing special.

However, she soon cast a suspicious glance. Although 5 million gold might be pocket change to him, it was a very large sum by normal standards. It seemed like a waste to stake such a valuable amount on something so trivial.

As if her suspicion was correct, Chase let out a short, derisive chuckle.

“Do you think memories will come back just by going there alone? Do you think I would stake 5 million gold for such a stupid and dull request?”

“Then……”

“You will meet with me regularly at that place. The frequency will be… yes. Whenever I want.”

Should she give up? Iella momentarily fell into an intense impulse.

If he said it like that, was “regularly” even the right expression? It was a completely arbitrary demand, as if all members of the imperial family inherently possessed the qualities of a tyrant.

‘No. I must endure. I need to return to my original body.’

But Iella, once again aware of reality, closed her eyes and opened them as if suppressing her impulse. In her heart, she repeatedly reminded herself that she needed to quickly find out if the Tear of Grace was truly necessary for her return.

If it wasn’t necessary, then she would somehow postpone his demands, delay them, and delay them again.

“So I just need to meet you?”

“As if.”

“Are you aware that your demands keep increasing?”

“It’s still woefully insufficient compared to the value of 5 million gold. You’re the one underestimating the worth of that amount in the Empire.”

She had no rebuttal because it wasn’t wrong. Iella, who pressed her lips together tightly, narrowed her eyes. She felt like she was getting entangled with him somehow. But now it was too late to back out.

‘So what should I do?’

Iella lowered her gaze and frantically racked her brain. Because of this, she didn’t immediately notice that he had moved closer by the same distance she had created.

“Then what do you want……”

“Well. What can you do?”

After much deliberation, Iella raised her gaze again and stopped speaking when she belatedly discovered he had come closer. With one hand on the armrest of the chair and the other arm draped over it, it looked as if half the chair was covered by his body.

Iella tried to retreat further by slowly sliding her hips back, but as soon as she tried, she realized there was nowhere else to go when her back touched the armrest. Now she had nowhere to escape.

Unlike her troubled state, she saw him smiling, seemingly finding her question interesting.

Iella abruptly felt the words “Are you joking?” rise to the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed them with effort. There was nothing to gain by provoking him in that way.

Soon, he rested his head on the arm draped over the chair and spoke.

“I always think, there’s only one thing you know how to do, isn’t there?”

Iella, who was about to ask what that was, stiffened her body at the approaching touch that came before her question. A large hand wearing thick black gloves lifted her chin and slowly rubbed her lower lip with its thumb.

The meaning embedded in that heated touch was very clear.

“Moaning in bed.”

After whispering those words, he inserted the thumb that had been stroking her lips directly into her hot, moist mouth. Startled by the sudden intrusion of something unfamiliar, his thumb rubbed slowly over her stiffened tongue. The smooth sensation of the glove felt strange.

His red eyes, gazing at the black glove getting slickly wet with saliva on her red tongue, which wasn’t much larger than his thumb, gradually darkened with lust.

“If I stimulate you, you’ll want to recover your memories faster.”

The atmosphere around him seemed to change in an instant, and then a sharp crashing sound filled the dining hall. In the blink of an eye, instead of food and utensils, Iella was lying on the dining table.

“What are you doing!”

“Shh.”

His two hands firmly gripped her slender waist as she struggled and resisted. He pulled her sharply, positioning himself perfectly between her two legs. With this series of events, her dress hiked up, revealing her pale, thin thighs halfway.

He moved his hand back to her lips and leaned forward. He wedged his moistened thumb between her tightly closed lips to part them, then brought his own lips closer.

His slanted nose bridge touched her first.

At that moment, Iella sharply turned her head to the side. She firmly pressed her two hands against his broad, firm chest to push him away.

She felt mentally disoriented, unable to understand how things had come to this. It felt like her mind couldn’t keep up with the situation. But now there was one thing she had clearly realized. The reason why the Grand Duke had volunteered to be a sponsor.

‘His interest in Ailexia wasn’t merely curiosity toward a plaything.’

Why had she thought it was just interest until now? When there was a perfectly obvious reason that could be considered in a relationship between grown adults.

Of course, there was a reason why she hadn’t noticed. The day she had mixed bodies with Allen in Ailexia’s body had been her first experience, and she hadn’t even dated before that.

No, since she had no memory of it and experienced it in someone else’s body, it couldn’t even be called a first experience.

It was then.

“Hnngh!”

A stinging pain arose from her nape. It had happened while she was lost in confusion.

“What are you…!”

Iella struggled with her body. But there was no way she could overcome him, who differed from her in physique from the start.

Chase interlocked his fingers with one of her hands that was trying to strike his shoulder, and buried his face deeper into her nape. His lips slid down onto her soft skin and languidly pressed against the reddened teeth marks.

Haah, as she shrank her body at his hot breath, he firmly tightened his hand holding her waist and pressed his body against hers. The way he slowly ground his lower body against hers in that position was extremely sensual.

“Wait, mmm, just, a moment… I hate this……”

Iella repeatedly struck his shoulders and chest with her free hand. But it was clear that it wasn’t even making an impact on him.

His lips, which had lingered on her nape for a while, slowly came down to her collarbone, kissing it as if savoring it, and nibbling on it as if to devour it.

Iella felt her body, which had been hot since yesterday, rapidly beginning to burn like an active volcano. The heat rushed to her head, making her dizzy.

‘This… is dangerous.’

She instinctively sensed it. Contrary to Iella’s intentions, Ailexia’s body, which had consistently pursued pleasure, was responding passionately to the current contact. Seemingly waiting for and expecting what would come next.

Iella bit her lip until it turned white and gathered all her strength to push him away. His body barely separated slightly, but it was clear to anyone that it wasn’t because Iella had pushed him, but because he had voluntarily moved away.

“Didn’t you accept the contract?”

“Not like this!”

His voice, lowered with lust, interrogated her. Iella glared at him, filled with a surge of indignation. She wanted to argue that if she had known it would be like this, she wouldn’t have listened from the beginning. But he cut off her words and lifted her chin.

“Not like this? Isn’t this what you’ve been doing every day?”

Excitement and anger intertwined in his blood-red eyes. Chase spoke, grinding his teeth.

“Every time I saw you like that, every time I thought about it. You don’t know how I felt. No, you probably knew but didn’t care. To you, I was just a stupid, dull bastard who did everything you wanted because I couldn’t let go of one past.”

“……”

“So you should endure this much. You should at least pity the man who gives everything away just to see that precious face once, just to receive a glance.”

Each pressing word returned to him as a dagger. She could see wounds staining over his entangled emotions.

Iella suddenly felt wronged. Why was she experiencing this instead of Ailexia? Why was she taking all the sh*t that Ailexia had caused? This entire situation made her frustrated and stifled.

That indignation naturally directed toward him in front of her.

“…What do you want me to do?”

“What?”

“If you were that desperate, instead of providing money and suffering alone, you should have said you hate me mixing bodies with other men. You shouldn’t have just done everything I wanted. In the end, you’re the one who did everything I wanted, so why are you wallowing in self-pity?”

She knew that Ailexia didn’t truly regard him. But so what? Despite knowing that, he was the one who showed interest in her. He was also the one who stepped forward to fulfill her desires.

Regardless of the reason, he was the one who made the choice, so she couldn’t understand why he was forcibly pushing his emotions onto Ailexia, saying she didn’t accept him, she didn’t look at him. If he found himself so pitiful, he could have stopped then.

She knew that human hearts aren’t that simple. But if he was going to suffer this much, it would have been better to stop.

“……Self-pity?”

He murmured, chewing on Iella’s words. Iella felt his grip on her hand loosening. However, as if mocking her internal relief, his gaze instantly turned fierce.

“Ha, right. …That’s all you could see.”

Iella sensed that something had gone wrong. Her words seemed to have touched a sore spot that had been coiled somewhere in his heart.

“From the beginning, it wasn’t me who pretended not to know, it was you, Ailexia. One day you suddenly appeared before me and then disappeared. When I was relieved to have found you, you acted like a completely different person.”

“……”

“Still, it was okay. Because I finally knew your name, because I knew who you were. I thought we could go back to how things were before. But you……”

He bit his lip hard as he coldly rebuked her. His expression furrowed as if recalling that time, then suddenly erased all emotion from his face.

“I was foolish. I should have treated you like this from the beginning.”

Iella had no chance to shake him off or avoid him. Like someone who had firmly made a decision, his blood-red eyes, forged with determination, instantly came closer, and her lips were devoured.

“Mmph!”

“Open.”