Chapter 3 – 【 His Princess 】 (Part 4)

Leaving Lahen to handle the commotion, Cedric and Yuria got into the carriage early. Although they offered to provide clothes to change into at the palace, Cedric boarded the carriage still wet, seeing that Yuria didn’t want to stay any longer.

“…….”

“…….”

Silence filled the carriage. Yuria was preoccupied with exploring the source of this oddly uncomfortable feeling. She wondered if it was because of Varen’s remarks that bothered her. No, that wasn’t it. Marriage proposals between kingdoms usually came to the elder sibling.

However, if the proposal had materialized, Yuria would have been pushed aside. She would have married someone else, and Cristal would have ended up marrying the prince.

She didn’t know what was bothering her, what was pricking her like a thorn stuck in her throat. She wondered if it was the lingering whispers in her ears or because they branded her as a woman who lusts after her husband’s p*nis. But thanks to that, the rumors of her infidelity and discord were dispelled, so it was actually a good thing.

Yet, she continued to feel down. Seeing his still wet and clinging clothes as they got off the carriage made her feel a surge of anger.

“Hurry up and wash. You’ll catch a cold.”

She sent Cedric to the bathroom first and prepared to wash herself, becoming increasingly irritable. The maids didn’t even ask if something happened at the palace. Even soaking in warm water and using her favorite scented oil didn’t improve her mood.

Perhaps because Lahen treated Cedric like a servant. No, she was more upset with Cedric. Yes, she was angry. It wasn’t discomfort; it was displ*asure. Yuria was quite displeased, and she realized that this displ*asure stemmed from the voices commenting on Cedric’s body.

Specifically, it was because Cedric’s body had been exposed to everyone. The voices of the ladies appraising his manhood were irritating. Even though it wasn’t Cedric’s intention and the viewers were just making mischievous jokes, Yuria hated it.

It felt like finding something you really liked only to realize others were eyeing it too. And in most cases, it would be taken away. Maybe that’s why. A sense of unease that Cedric might be taken away washed over her.

The princess, who had been sharply angry, suddenly drooped her shoulders, and the maids attending her were puzzled. Fortunately, their confusion didn’t last long. Cedric, who had finished his bath first, suddenly opened the bathroom door without knocking.

“Count.”

“Everyone out. I’ll finish attending to the Princess.”

The maids exchanged glances and then quickly left. Yuria was flabbergasted. It wasn’t the bedroom, but the bathroom door he had barged into.

“W-what are you doing?”

Even though he had seen her n*ked countless times, Yuria instinctively hugged her knees.

“Attending to your bath.”

“You’ve never done it before.”

“There’s a first time for everything. How hard can it be?”

He threw off his robe, revealing his n*ked body. The very thing that had elicited gasps from many earlier was now standing erect.

“Why are you sitting there so uncomfortably?”

He approached and looked down at Yuria, who was huddled up, and swept his wet hair back. His long legs stepped into the tub.

“Now you’re going to act all modest?”

The voice that filled the bathroom was unexpectedly cold. His actions—squeezing into the tub without hugging her and deliberately sitting opposite her—revealed his current mood. He was displeased.

She wondered if it was because Lahen treated him like a servant or because he couldn’t do what he needed to at the banquet due to Varen. Yuria sat back against the tub wall and idly splashed the water with her hand.

He obviously didn’t come to attend to her bath, and the ensuing situation was predictable. If he couldn’t wait for her to finish bathing and barged in, it meant his mood was quite twisted. And on such days, their intimacy pushed Yuria to her limits.

She would cry out of shame until she was too exhausted to cry anymore. There were times when she fainted momentarily and woke up still receiving his c*ck. Therefore, she had to make the right decision here.

Even if she didn’t attend the banquet tomorrow, she couldn’t afford to show her youngest sibling that she couldn’t walk properly. If she did as Cedric wanted, it would likely embarrass her, but at least she could manage to move around.

“Sit comfortably.”

“…I’m comfortable like this.”

“You don’t look comfortable; it seems like you’re protesting for me to leave immediately.”

He didn’t like the way she was hugging her knees. The princess, soaking wet and huddled in the corner of the tub, looked pitiful and pathetic. It felt like she was silently telling him to leave. As if he could hear her silent accusation that he was the one making her feel this way.

“It’s not that…”

“Not what? Did seeing your potential husband make you realize your current one isn’t good enough? So much so that you don’t even want to spread your legs?”

Yuria shook her head. The motion caused the droplets hanging on her eyelashes to fall like tears. Cedric’s grip on the edge of the tub tightened.

“You couldn’t take your eyes off the prince while dancing with me.”

“I was looking at Cristal.”

“That’s a good excuse, Princess.”

“It’s not an excuse.”

“Why would you look at Princess Cristal when you can just look in the mirror?”

Yuria was momentarily speechless. Though she was Cristal’s twin, there were clear differences between them. Yuria knew it, Cristal knew it, and everyone in the kingdom knew it. Yet he said something so blatantly. 

Is he mocking me?

But Cedric was serious. He wasn’t trying to mock her. Despite worrying about his sense of aesthetics, Yuria felt secretly pleased.

“Did I hit the mark?”

Cedric interpreted Yuria’s silence differently. Since Varen’s internal revelation, Yuria had shut her mouth tight like a clam and returned to the mansion. Her expression was so severe that he missed the timing to speak to her.

Her mind must have been chaotic. Originally destined to marry the prince, her life was upended by the sudden appearance of an illegitimate child, ruining everything. She must have hated him. He understood that, in his head.

“Come here.”

Yuria hesitated. Inside, he was fuming. He wondered if she was acting this way because she wanted to be roughly handled, or if she genuinely dislike him today. It was infuriating.

“If you don’t want to show off your marital harmony to your younger sibling, you’d better move quickly, Princess.”

It was only after this veiled threat that Yuria moved. She seemed to sense that if Cedric moved, they wouldn’t rest even if the sun rose. As she approached hesitantly, Cedric pulled her arm, and her soft body wrapped around him like water.

Without being told, she spread her legs on either side of him, positioning his erect manhood between her thighs. Despite doing everything right, she avoided his gaze, which drove him crazy.

“Ah.”

He bit into the white nape of her neck, visible through her wet hair. He left bite marks on the spot where a pearl necklace used to hang.

That damn pearl necklace. If she wanted, he could buy her ten or twenty more. If she asked for a mansion like a palace, he could build her one more luxurious than the palace. But if she asked for the queen’s throne, he couldn’t give her that.

In the carriage, Yuria probably sighed, thinking about what she had lost because of him, the lowly illegitimate child who could never give her what she truly wanted. When Yuria’s shoulders drooped, it felt like a stone settled inside him.

The stone soon turned into a burning ember, scorching him from the inside out. Even when he heard reports of Yuria having an affair, he didn’t feel this dirty. He couldn’t give Yuria what she wanted. He couldn’t ultimately satisfy his princess.

Was it an inferiority complex? A sense of inadequacy? Anger from such shameful and ugly emotions simmered within him.

“It hurts, Cedric…”

Whether it was her neck being bitten or her b*ttocks being squeezed, Yuria twisted her body. Each movement to escape only fanned the flames burning inside him.

“If you do this, uh, there will be marks.”

“So what if there are?”

“I have to go to the banquet…”

Didn’t you say you didn’t want to go to the banquet? You didn’t even want to mention the palace, but now you’re worried about the banquet?

“Why, is there someone at the banquet who can’t know you had s*x with your husband?”

“My father and mother, and also…”

“You didn’t even look their way. Be honest, you just don’t want the prince to see.”

When Yuria shook her head, he squeezed her b*ttocks hard, making her jerk. Her erect n*pples brushed against his scarred chest, and heat surged to his lower body. His manhood, trapped between her thighs, twitched on its own, startling Yuria.

“You didn’t want to attend the banquet in the first place. Didn’t you say yesterday you only wanted to go on the first day?”

“That was, uh, just words… Cedric, your, that, that thing.”

It keeps moving on its own, rubbing against her wet, tender flesh—Yuria couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud, so she sent him a teary look, but Cedric wasn’t in the mood to understand.

Or rather, he understood but didn’t want to acknowledge it. Instead of pulling out, he moved his hand from her waist to her softened br*asts, massaging them.