Chapter 6

“G, get back a little, Ishiel.”

“Why?”

Why? A few reasons flashed through her mind, but the moment Ishiel asked why, they all evaporated into white emptiness. Adeline only opened and closed her lips before barely pulling out one reason.

“It’s too cramped, the position is uncomfortable.”

It was truly a clumsy excuse. Still, perhaps it worked, because Ishiel took a step back. Just as Adeline relaxed and caught her breath, he grabbed her by the waist and swiftly lifted her up.

“Ah……!”

In an instant, Adeline found herself seated on top of the table, and without thinking she threw her arms around Ishiel’s shoulders. Not missing that opening, Ishiel slipped in between Adeline’s legs.

Now abruptly holding Ishiel between her parted legs, Adeline struggled to get away, but it was useless.

“Wh, what are you doing, Ishiel.”

“You said the position was uncomfortable. It’s comfortable now, isn’t it?”

He smiled. The corners of his eyes curved like crescent moons, and the corners of his lips formed a pretty arc. It was the smile Adeline had loved so dearly. The feeling of it being both familiar and strange confused her.

“Adeline, you haven’t forgotten the rules of the game, have you?”

You were the one who made the game. Thanks to Ishiel pointing out something that did not even need saying, Adeline’s face turned red. Unable to do anything else, Adeline nodded.

“Then pay me.”

“Of course I will. But not like this……”

Adeline was not the sort who lacked sense. From the hand roaming over her waist, from the gaze looking down at her, she had already realized what Ishiel wanted as payment.

But why?

She had never imagined Ishiel would want this sort of compensation, and that left her flustered. I abandoned you and left, and you still want me? Or is this out of resentment?

“This can’t happen.”

Adeline drew the line firmly. Whatever his feelings might be, this was not right. It would do neither of them any good.

“I came all the way in here to save your life, and you weren’t even going to give me this much?

It was said in a tone with something dark in it as it settled by her ear. At the voice, one she had never heard once in all her life from Ishiel, Adeline shifted her eyes upward to look at him.

“Then what were you going to offer me as payment? A kiss? That’s far too light a price for a life, isn’t it?”

At some point, the familiar smile had vanished from his face, and in its place sat an expression cold as ice. Anger swelled in his eyes, darkened by the night.

Seeing a side of Ishiel she had never once known before, Adeline shrank in on herself. Like a small animal that had come face to face with a predator in a remote forest, Adeline grew taut with fear.

The unruly hand that had been tracing her waist then gripped at the part of her beneath her, pressed against the table. The bold touch left her flustered.

Where had that Ishiel gone, the one who had treated Adeline like a glass doll, as if she might break from the slightest touch? The Ishiel before her now seemed like a completely different person.

“Surely you weren’t planning to end it with nothing more than a hug? Hmm, Adeline?”

“M, money, or, a ship maybe.”

“Adeline, when have we ever exchanged things like that?”

Something in Adeline’s answer seemed to amuse him, because he let out a small laugh. Hearing it again, it sounded almost like a scoff, or perhaps a dry laugh of disbelief.

Either way, Adeline could not read Ishiel’s true thoughts now. She pushed firmly at his shoulders.

It was still useless. No, one thing at least had become certain: Ishiel was no longer that boy from back then, the one who would yield when she pushed him.

“You have to answer, Adeline. When have I ever wanted anything material?”

Never. From the beginning, it had not been a game created for the sake of exchanging material things.

“But I have a husband……”

And yet, were things not different then and now?

“How long has that old man been dead.”

“An old man? He, he wasn’t that old.”

The Marquis had been older than they were, but not old enough to be called an old man.

“Are you taking that bastard’s side?”

“……?”

Did Ishiel just curse? Adeline lifted her head as if she could not believe it.

“Does it upset you that I called your husband a bastard?”

Her reaction had come from the shock of hearing Ishiel use such a harsh word, but it seemed Ishiel had taken it differently. His brow twitched upward in displeasure.

“That’s, that’s not it……”

“What, were you planning to send off your husband like that and stay chaste for the rest of your life?”

Were your feelings for him really that deep? The muttering voice dripped with anger he could not quite swallow down.

“Or do you not want this with me? Is that it?”

At the barrage of questions, Adeline could not gather her thoughts at all. When she hesitated and failed to answer at once, Ishiel let out a short, dry laugh.

“You said you’d do anything I wanted, and now you’re taking it back already.”

“That’s because I never thought you would want something like this……”

It seemed that had not been a very good answer, because Ishiel’s gaze sank even deeper as he looked at her.

“Poor Susanna.”

In a tone that did not sound the least bit sorry, Ishiel clicked his tongue.

“She’s probably relieved right now that she survived, but thanks to having the wrong master, she’ll die soon enough.”

“Wh, what do you mean by that.”

“If you don’t pay me, then I have to leave, Adeline. I can simply set sail as early as tomorrow and go. And if I do, do you think Lord Breslow will leave Susanna alone?”

Conrad Breslow, who had sent kidnappers after Adeline, must be in a state of great panic right now. The men he had sent to abduct her had all vanished, while Adeline had returned perfectly unharmed, and with an Admiral in tow, no less.

He was surely making frantic efforts to find out what had happened. And if Ishiel left like this, Conrad would begin by finding and taking Susanna, Adeline’s personal maid.

“Do you really think those people would spare Susanna?”

Adeline bit her lip. She could not guarantee Susanna’s life.

Most of the servants in the Hartmann estate had been her mother-in-law’s people. Among them, the only one who had looked after Adeline was Susanna.

And Susanna had already been cut by a blade for the crime of taking good care of Adeline, and now she might even lose her life. Susanna’s voice, saying that her old mother and young siblings depended only on her, rang in Adeline’s ears like a hallucination.

If I let Susanna die, will I really be able to live freely after that? The answer was no.

“Do you still want me to leave?”

“……!”

Is this blackmail right now? Adeline’s long lashes fluttered in shock. Ishiel had blackmailed her. And not just that, but in a way she could never possibly refuse.

That Ishiel would blackmail her using another person’s life. Is he really the Ishiel I knew?

The eyes with which Adeline looked up at him trembled as if struck by an earthquake. The voice brushing against her ears felt unbearably unfamiliar.

The warm eyes once filled with affection were hidden under the darkness of night, and his hand looked ready at any moment to lift her hem.

The man standing before her was surely Ishiel, and yet her heart pounded as though she were facing a stranger.

Her thoughts were in turmoil, and her mouth had gone dry.

“Pay me, Adeline.”

And this time, don’t run away. Though I doubt you could. His muttered voice, as if spoken only to himself, was dark and low. At the voice settling by her ear, the strength abruptly drained from Adeline’s hands, which had been pushing him away all this time.

Not missing that moment, Ishiel immediately swallowed her lips. He bit at her lower lip until it parted and then pressed in roughly. His thick tongue stirred through her mouth without mercy and tangled around her small tongue.

It was the first time she had ever been kissed so roughly, and Adeline could do little more than try desperately to keep up with him. Mmngh, a stifled sound slipped from her, and he pulled her lower body closer still.

Between her parted legs, the heavy hardness there pressed against her mercilessly. Her thin nightdress and the even thinner undergarment beneath it might as well not have existed. The hot heat of that place was conveyed directly between her thighs.

Ishiel slowly rubbed where they met below. It was not even such a violent motion, and yet a strange soft sound escaped Adeline’s lips.

“Uh, haa……”

Like a man dying of thirst, he sucked at Adeline’s tongue. Whenever the slightest gap opened between their lips, he closed it again more tightly, so that Adeline was pushed farther and farther back.

When Adeline seemed about to lose her balance and did not know what to do, Ishiel simply caught the back of her head and pressed her down onto the table.

After that, he easily lifted both of Adeline’s legs up onto the table. The hem of her thin nightdress slid up her thighs and fell toward her lower belly.

Now, with only a single layer left beneath, he drove upward between her legs with the thick front of his clothes as if stabbing into that narrow space. A sharp sensation ran up her spine.

It was not as though her body had forgotten all pleasure entirely, and yet even such a small stimulus left Adeline at a loss. It was a sensation she had never felt after parting from Ishiel.

Her husband had spent nearly all his days with his mistress, but that did not mean he had completely refrained from sharing a bed with Adeline. On the occasions when she had to lie with him, Adeline had found it only difficult and unpleasant.

Their first night had been especially dreadful. The entire time he joined with Adeline, her husband had grumbled that her hips were too small. How could she possibly have loved him?

Whenever Adeline had no choice but to share a bed with her husband, she thought of Ishiel. She shut her eyes tightly and imagined that the hands touching her were not her husband’s, but Ishiel’s.

That did not make it feel good. It only made it a little easier to endure. Adeline tried not to feel anything at all. As day by day she became more accustomed to numbness, she also lost the body’s pleasure.

She had thought she would never again feel anything like desire or delight.

And yet the moment Ishiel’s hands touched her, the sensitivity she had believed gone began to bloom back to life, one piece at a time. Everywhere his hands touched, heat blossomed.

It was hot and unbearably ticklish. Every nerve in her body gathered at the skin that touched him.

“Uu, hh……”

Only when Adeline was nearly at the point of gasping out her breath did Ishiel finally pull away from her. Adeline inhaled sharply. Whether because she was short of breath, or because excitement had done something to her mind, her head swam and she did not want to think of anything.

She only wanted to let her body follow whatever Ishiel did. Then suddenly, a gust of wind blew and rattled the window. Clatter― the balcony door, which had not been properly shut, slowly slid open in the wind.

At the cold air that came in through it, focus returned to Adeline’s eyes, which had gone hazy and dazed. But Ishiel paid no mind at all to whether the balcony door had opened or not, being wholly occupied with tasting, licking, and sucking at the nape of Adeline’s neck.