Chapter 4

The ribbon, which had been pulled so tight that it had half dug into her skin, loosened in an instant, and the lace cloth that had covered the mound slipped halfway down. Through that gap, the seeping chill settled against the place that was already slightly damp.

There was no need to untie the ribbon on the other side. When he simply pulled the undergarment down as it was, a scrap of sparse lace cloth stained with clear wetness dangled against the fuller part of her inner thigh.

The man’s gaze, darkened around the eyes, traced over her hidden place. There was an unfamiliar air to it, like someone exploring unknown territory. The mound lightly covered with soft hair, the reddish flesh hidden inside, the clear honey gathered at the place that twitched.

It was not as though this was his first time seeing a woman’s body there, so was it because it was his first time seeing hers. His gaze was so lingering that the place below began to itch in anticipation.

Lottie did her best to calm her heart, which was pounding as if it might leap into her throat, and looked steadily up at Sebastian.

‘The one who ought to be relieved is me.’

Because Sebastian had not stopped there.

She had heard there were shameless men who were promiscuous themselves yet obsessed over a woman’s first time, and Sebastian seemed to be exactly that sort. Maybe he simply found it refreshing because an innocent commoner was a first for him. Whatever the truth was, it worked out well for Lottie.

He seemed to have made up his own reason and accepted why Lottie would choose to have her first experience with someone who was not her lover. He probably thought Lottie, being a commoner, did not care about physical purity.

Lottie had no intention of clearing up that misunderstanding.

Because with Sebastian, this would be the last time.

Unless, perhaps, during this prolonged parting, he gave her some new answer….

Yes. Sebastian, who thought she was a commoner. Sebastian, who had shown her kindness first at the Academy. Sebastian, who so readily gave her his lips and even his body. Sebastian, who worried over her purity… even if only because he found some enjoyment in coupling with someone as clumsy as her.

If, for such an unfortunate reason, he still chose to continue their connection.

‘Then he would be wanting me without knowing my family name….’

Then, would continuing to see Sebastian not be going against her grandfather’s wishes.

While she was rationalizing the way her heart softened, at least when it came to the man she liked, Sebastian’s eyes had already fixed themselves on the slightly parted folds.

“So small.”

“…Hngh.”

The man’s thumb parted the lips there and rubbed open the little opening.

At the unfamiliar sensation, Lottie flinched in surprise. Her knees jerked, and the inside of the entrance clenched all at once.

“Relax.”

“Y-yes……”

“You’re really alright?”

Instead of answering, Lottie reached out and pulled Sebastian’s head toward her. And with a kiss that had grown even fiercer, the man’s hand pushed into Lottie’s folded hollow, and every truth disappeared beyond excitement.

***

Five years ago.

The day Lottie entered the Academy by taking the exam rather than donating like other nobles, according to her grandfather’s dying wish.

“Gasp……! I-I’m sorry……!”

Lottie, whipping her head this way and that in search of the hall where the entrance ceremony was being held, became dizzy from the enormous crowd she had encountered for the first time in her life and toppled straight forward.

And the one she fell onto was Sebastian Collins.

While Lottie was flustered in shock at having caused trouble for a man who was clearly of very noble status, judging only from his build and the way he dressed.

“I’m fine. It’s your first day at the Academy, so you must have been excited. More importantly, are you hurt?”

Even though he must have been startled by some rustic girl suddenly falling all over him, the man instead wore that distinctively cool and pleasant face and worried about her first.

“Don’t look like you’re about to cry. You can’t ruin the memory of your first day over something like this. Right?”

“Thank you……”

“I’m a freshman too, so speak comfortably. Nice to meet you, I’m Sebastian.”

On the face of the man, who had noticed she was not a noble and introduced himself without his family name, using only his given name, there bloomed a beautiful smile.

The finely curved corners of his eyes, the pale sky-colored eyes that shone like jewels beneath the brilliant autumn sunlight, the corners of his mouth lifting as if drawn there because he laughed aloud to reassure her, even the neat teeth half visible between his lips……

It was a smile as radiant as the portrait of an angel she had seen at the royal museum three years ago, not long after arriving at the royal castle.

That same careless, far-too-generous smile would later make every student at the Academy praise him as a ‘criminally charming man,’ but….

In any case, the moment she caught that kindly drifting smile directed at her in her eyes.

At seventeen, Lottie’s first love began.

“I’ll stand in front and block the view. Tell me when you’ve fixed your clothes. You’re not hurt anywhere, are you?”

It was an endless first love for the youthful young man with broad shoulders, who had taken off his jacket and spread it wide to shield her because her clothes had been disturbed.

“You got them as a free gift? Madame Loretta’s macarons? No way. It’s not like you’re a Silver Wolf VIP.”

“D*mn, doesn’t Madame Loretta not even take reservations?”

“What do we do! Anyone can tell you stood in line for three hours to buy these! Seb, looks like the top student from the entrance exam is really into you.”

“Miss Entrance Exam, you must get a pretty generous allowance, huh? Isn’t one of these like 5 Silom or something?”

“Lottie.”

“Hm?”

“My name, it’s Lottie.”

Not even once.

“Thank you, Lottie. Even if they were a free gift, they’re so rare you’d hate to give them away…. And what happened back then was nothing much.”

Not once did he treat her heart, wrapped up in clumsy lies, as ridiculous.

Nor did he treat her lightly, or try to use her tilted feelings as leverage over her.

And even at the very end……

***

“Hngh, Seb, mm……”

“Yes, Lottie. Hold on to me. Lift your waist. That’s it.”

“Hngh……!”

“Are you alright? Is it too deep? If it hurts, tell me. I’ll stop.”

“No, hngh, I, I’m fine……. ngh……!”

Sebastian held Lottie with such tenderness in both lips and body that it almost made her mistake them for real lovers. He did not mind at all even when Lottie freely called him by a nickname she had never been given permission to use.

That said, what passed between them did not feel merely like child’s play.

First of all, Sebastian was large. Enough to be a little startling.

His build was tall and broad to begin with, so she had prepared herself to some degree, but because his beauty was sometimes described as almost pretty, she had never imagined he would be this forceful.

And… he had no hesitation in licking and sucking at every part of Lottie’s body. Even if it was part of what was supposed to happen before the main act, he was so relentless that it almost felt a little indecent….

“Ah, th-there, it’s dir-ty……!”

Her nape, the br*asts he had tugged free above the edge of her dress, even Lottie’s underarms revealed when he pulled her shoulders down…. He rubbed and licked every bit of skin he could see with his lips, savoring every place without exception.

“Who said you could be this cute all the way here……”

“Hngh……!”

“Stay still, they say I have to loosen you up enough.”

Of all those places, the one he gave the most attention to was inside her spread thighs beneath the crumpled hem of her skirt. There, after peeling away the playful scrap of lace, appeared the hidden place Lottie herself had barely ever properly touched. As if the little cries that slipped out when he teased her cl*toris and the folds of her inner lips with the tip of his tongue, and the way the entrance twitched, were all unbearably cute, Sebastian could hardly bring his smiling mouth away from there.

Not until Lottie, drenched in swelling pleasure, twisted her whole body and shuddered through one sharp cl*max after another.

There was something unexpected in the middle of it too. He fumbled uselessly with the lace ties and hooks cinching her waist, and in the end gave up trying to undress her and simply started as she was. He had looked perfectly fine, but apparently he was more affected than he seemed. Even though it should not have been his first time undressing a woman.

In any case, after sucking greedily at her cl*toris and opening her with the fingers he had worked inside until her body had softened enough to satisfy him, once he pushed himself into the opening that had begun to twitch as if asking to be filled with something, he became wholly unruly.

“Ahh……!”

“Mmh, it’s alright. You’ll get used to it.”

“It’s, too……”

“Yes, it’s always like that at first……. Try breathing. That’s it.”

Every time he spread Lottie’s legs wide and drove his hips up into her, thud, smack, the two br*asts hanging loose above the edge of her dress shook roughly.

The man’s eyes as he watched that sight were soaked in rapture.

“Too beautiful……. No one else knows your body looks like this inside. What an honor…….”

Staring as though entranced at the swollen trace around her *reola, puffed from all the sucking and licking he had done, he whispered shameless things in a tone that made it sound as though Lottie was unbearably lovely to him.

“Kh, Lottie. Am I that good? You’re holding on so tight……. Was it a good thing I tasted you?”

No, perhaps it would be more accurate to call them obscene words.

As expected of the man at the center of all those sordid romantic rumors.

Once he truly began moving in earnest, there was not one thing about Lottie’s cries, or her br*asts bouncing in time with the rhythm of his thrusting, or the way her entrance and the inner folds clung tightly around him, that he did not seem to find beautiful, his reddened eyes curved the whole time in a delighted arc.