Chapter 3

Was he angry?

Had there been something in Lottie’s rambling that offended him? Or was he trying to intimidate her into stopping here, since she did not know any better?

In any case, it was a reaction Lottie had not anticipated in the slightest. It was also a side of Sebastian she had never seen in the past five years.

‘W-who told him to kiss so earnestly? And he got that excited too.’

She could not lose heart. Something between him and her had crossed a certain line. The vague and wistful unrequited love was already over, and now she stood at the crossroads of whether to leave him as a first love that ended with the memory of a single kiss, or make him a first love that ended with the memory of sleeping together once.

And Lottie wanted, since it had come to this, to bring her first love to a grand finish.

Lottie took one step closer, narrowing the distance between them. As she rubbed the gem on her wrist more desperately and slightly drew in her shoulders, the swell of her br*asts rose a little more above the deeply cut neckline, deepening the line of her cleavage. On top of that, when she lightly pressed against his waist, the outline of his fully hardened arousal twitched.

The Adam’s apple in the man’s thick neck above his cravat bobbed roughly.

“You said you were sorry you couldn’t return my feelings.”

“……”

“You knew I liked you. The tulips I gave you on the last festival day, and the birthday gifts I gave you every summer. You accepted them while knowing full well all the excuses I made, saying I happened to pick them up on the way, or that they were left over. I couldn’t even count how many times you stepped in to lend me your notes and textbooks. And even so, you never took me for a fool, and kept treating me kindly.”

As she gathered up the shameful memories of her one-sided love, now useless in every way, her face suddenly grew hot before she knew it. No, her face had long since been flushed, so perhaps it was more accurate to say her eyes had begun to burn.

“If you accepted all of that……. couldn’t you accept me just one more time?”

Lottie pressed her throat tight to hold back the swell of emotion and barely continued speaking.

“Because of you, even my fall on the day of the entrance ceremony became a good memory, so on graduation day too… make me a good memory.”

“……”

“So I can let go without regrets, hm?”

Lottie made her voice as sweet as she could and blinked her upturned eyes alluringly. Whether it worked well or not, she could not tell.

And when the silence between them began to stretch long.

Booom, bang! Boom! Bang! The fireworks reached their finale. Amid the thunderous roar of the exploding sparks, the lights embroidering the night sky flickered in a strange reflected glow over the man’s cold blue eyes.

“Lottie.”

“……”

“It seems I too… have misunderstood you quite a bit all this time.”

“……”

“Quite……”

The moment Sebastian’s aching voice trailed off with a deep sigh. His jaw tightened, and then, bending at the waist, he supported Lottie’s back and the backs of her knees and lifted her up in one sweep.

“You’re not going to regret it?”

At the man’s solemn question, Lottie nodded a beat late.

It was not because she hesitated to answer out of fear that she might regret it. It was because, somehow, those words sounded like a resolve Sebastian was making to himself.

***

“Hoo, Lottie……”

The place Sebastian headed to was his own room.

Lottie found that a little unexpected. Traditionally, at the Academy graduation banquet, many graduates became drunk on the mood of parting and enjoyed one last indulgence. Not only in the temporary rest lounges set up near the great hall, but in any plausible place nearby at all, they would press their heated bodies together, so much so that from the next day on, all kinds of scandalous eyewitness stories became topics among the underclassmen. As if encouraging them to enjoy themselves as much as they liked, the Academy student council even handed out contraceptive candies when the banquet began.

So Lottie had thought Sebastian would be the same. Since there was a high chance he had another partner for tonight, she had assumed he would quickly grant her request there on the balcony and then leave.

And if not, then at the very least, she thought he would deal with it somewhere not far from the banquet hall.

More than anything… had not the rumors of Sebastian being alone with someone also always been set in public places, like the instrument practice rooms, a supply room of some department, or the hedge maze in the garden, and the like.

Then again, things that happened in a private space like this would not become rumors. If that was so, then just how many female students had he laid on this bed until now……

That absurd imagining did not last very long.

“Mngh……!”

The moment they entered the unexpectedly simple and tidy room, after setting Lottie down on his bed, he immediately came down over her.

“Lottie, hoo, you, even that sultry expression of yours is cute……”

The man’s lips wandered over her face and the nape of her neck, anxiously murmuring her name. He showered small kisses as if rubbing them over her earlobe and beneath her jaw, and when he passed near the line of her neck muscle, he even sucked there with force.

Like someone who had regretted not being able to savor her skin all the way here.

The hand that had been tracing her curves suddenly seized one br*ast roughly, then rubbed over her n*pple through the fabric and pressed his lips along the rounded rise of her br*ast over her clothes.

The sensuality seeping along the line of her br*ast made the inside of Lottie’s navel grow hazy and hot.

His other hand lifted the layers of her skirt, the petticoat, the lace laid over the outer fabric, all of it one after another. That hungry hand was hot. Without even having time to remove her shoes, it slid up over her calves still clad in white stockings. After kneading the soft inner flesh of her thigh that bulged against the stocking band, it crept higher, into deeper places.

“Hngh, not there……”

Flinch, Lottie reflexively pressed her legs together. And then she realized too late. She had been the one to ask him to sleep with her first, so what was she doing……

As expected, the man’s hand paused. Fortunately, he did not stop there, and the hand that had boldly entered the deepest part of her thigh wandered as if tickling the tender skin. Whenever it brushed lightly near the mound there, she could feel his hot body heat through the fabric stuck to the flesh dampened by her wetness.

He looked ready to spread apart the gap between her thighs at any moment.

“Hic……”

Without meaning to, Lottie sniffled. No matter what, the tension would not leave her. Along with it came the fear that it would be embarrassing if he noticed her undergarments were damp.

And so, unable to part her legs, yet unable to truly reject him either, she merely let her knees tremble awkwardly, when.

“Lottie, you……”

Sensing that something was odd, Sebastian lifted his body.

Below his narrowed brows, his heat-blurred eyes shone with suspicion.

“Is this your first time, by any chance?”

“Huh? Well, that……”

A-as expected, had it shown? Startled, Lottie stammered, then, having no words to dress it up with, confessed.

“…Mm. Th-then, do you not want to?”

“No, it’s not that, but rather……”

D*mn it, if you were a first-timer too…. 

Sebastian, clutching his forehead, muttered something under his breath as if grinding it out, but it did not reach Lottie’s ears in her flustered state. She was suddenly seized by fear that the worn and practiced Sebastian might leave, saying she would not be any fun for him.

“I, I won’t tell you to take responsibility.”

“What?”

“I, well, I’ll do well. For a long time I wanted to e-eat… no, have you, so I studied, studied a lot. You don’t have to spare me just because it’s my first time, and you can do whatever you want. Maybe I even like being dragged along a little roughly……?”

At the sound of her voice rambling on, deliberately using words that did not suit her in an effort to sound shameless, Sebastian gave a hollow laugh.

What should she do, he was supposed to find it arousing, not ridiculous.

Lottie, gnawing lightly at her lips, squeezed her eyes shut, then awkwardly parted her legs. Then, when she pulled up the many layers of skirt bunched around her waist, the undergarments she had worn on purpose, made of lace so sheer that the skin beneath showed plainly, were revealed.

“So, just keep going.”

And those undergarments had ribbons tied at both sides.

“My last wish……. Hm?”

The jewel of the amulet on Lottie’s wrist, where she clutched her skirt, flashed in the light.

So then, those particular undergarments were the finishing touch of the outfit she had deliberately prepared for today. She had chosen something easy to remove so there would be no difficulty in getting things done at once, anywhere and in any position, once the mood was lit, and something whose very appearance was indecent enough on its own.

If it were known in full just how many different rehearsals Lottie had run through in her head in order to somehow win one night with Sebastian, anyone who knew her usual quiet and modest self would be appalled.

The same went for Sebastian. As he followed her hand with his eyes, the tips of his ears turned bright red, and at last he squeezed his eyes shut. This is driving me mad……. muttering that under his breath, he rubbed his face as if steadying himself from the shock, then spoke low, as if scraping at his throat.

“You really… won’t regret this?”

Regret?

At that unexpected question, Lottie’s lips parted slightly.

“Even though it’s your first time, if we do it like this……. will you be alright?”

“Huh? Ah, well.”

Come to think of it. She had heard that nobles were generally obsessed with physical purity.

‘Especially when it comes to women……’

People said that it was a virtue to have one’s first experience on the wedding night with one’s husband, and that some old-fashioned types even broke off marriages with women who were not v*rgins.

So Sebastian was worrying about her. Kindly, at that.

But as for Lottie, she had forgotten all about such ordinary conditions for marriage, because she was in no position to care about them. In the political marriage market, her value did not lie in anything like physical purity.

No matter how moved she was by him, she could not explain those circumstances in detail.

Because Lottie had promised her late grandfather that while attending the Academy, she would not speak of her status.

“The real you. The ones who recognize you without knowing the name Volfman are your true people. While you’re at the Academy, find many such precious connections……”

Since Lottie, whose status had changed many times over the years, deeply understood why her grandfather had left such words behind, she wanted to keep that promise no matter what.

Even if the other person was Sebastian.

And so, unable to answer right away, she kept revising one excuse after another inside her mouth, when.

“Then again, maybe it doesn’t matter…….”

As if he had reached his own answer, Sebastian tugged roughly at the cravat that sat neatly around his throat. Tap, tap, tap……. With concise movements, he undid his shirt buttons one by one.

At the sight of his bare body revealed in an instant, Lottie’s face turned bright red.

He always wore his cadet uniform carelessly enough that it was difficult to guess properly, but the body beneath his clothes was as beautiful as his face. His straight, broad shoulders and collarbones, muscles swelled to the fullest extent possible within exactly the necessary limit, and below his lean waist even the jut of his hip bones was pleasing to look at.

He looked like a n*de model used in drawing class during liberal arts painting lessons.

For a long time, Lottie stared fixedly at that beautifully shaped male body, forgetting even that her face had grown hot and flushed.

“…That’s a relief. So I don’t have to stop.”

Whispering that, Sebastian gave a brief kiss to the tip of Lottie’s nose.

That gentleness seemed meant to distract her attention, because his two large hands firmly seized Lottie’s knees and spread them wide apart to either side.

At his touch, pop, one ribbon that had been precariously resting against her hip came undone.