How many times was this now? She thought she would never confess again, yet the words slipped out in the end. But there was one difference from before. It was past tense. Nate smiled, a little bitterly.

Damon stayed leaned against her without moving for a while, unreadable. Then, slowly, he lifted his head and met her eyes. His cheeks looked faintly flushed, for some reason.

“You liked me for my looks, didn’t you?”

Nate blinked, flustered by his question.

“…I can’t say it wasn’t that, but it wasn’t the whole of it.”

“Well…… You did seem pretty indifferent when you first saw me.”

“What? Oh, that was… I just didn’t think I’d ever have any reason to get involved with you……”

“Why did you think that? Was your first impression of me bad? Did I seem like some c*ck-chasing wh*re?”

The crude words out of his mouth made Nate’s expression jump. Damon smiled lazily and kneaded Nate’s br*ast, rubbing her n*pple with his thumb in slow circles. She assumed the whole thing was over, but his lewd hands kept moving so naturally that all she could do was let out a m*an.

Damon lowered his head and dragged his tongue up Nate’s other n*pple. As though that wasn’t enough, he took it into his mouth and gave it one deliberate s*ck. Nate’s toes curled. The strange pleasure felt good and unbearably embarrassing all at once.

Damon whispered to Nate like a temptation.

“I may not look it, but I’m actually a v*rgin.”

Her eyes went wide at his words.

“Pardon?”

He ground his *rect c*ck subtly against her legs as he answered.

“A v*rgin. I’ve never gone all the way with a woman.”

His words had no credibility whatsoever. That much was clear just from what he was doing to her right now. How could someone who was openly grinding his swollen c*ck against a woman’s body be a v*rgin? Nate didn’t believe him.

“Hh, Young lord, you don’t have to lie to me. I already assumed you had plenty of experience……. Hmm.”

“It’s true I’ve fooled around with women in all kinds of filthy ways, but I’ve never had penetrative s*x. I managed myself, in a manner of speaking.”

“M-managed yourself……?”

“Yes.”

He deliberately ground his swollen lower half hard against Nate’s legs over his trousers. She startled, eyes going wide. Paying no mind to her reaction, Damon pressed the taut, straining front of his trousers against Nate’s core and rolled against her slowly. He let out a small groan and spoke.

“C*ck management, Miss O’Hara.”

Nate kept reeling from the obscene things coming out of his mouth. But he said them so casually that the words were starting to feel almost ordinary.

He frowned like he was struggling to hold himself back and continued.

“It’s a v*rgin c*ck that’s never had a taste of a woman, so wouldn’t it be fine to push it into a clean woman like Miss O’Hara?”

“W-what?”

“I thought I might be willing to give Miss O’Hara my virginity, if she’d allow it.”

He decided to adjust his plan slightly. His original intent was simply to frighten Nate into understanding this place was dangerous. But now Damon thought of a different approach.

“On the condition, of course, that you promise never to come to Hotel Ombra again.”

No, in truth, all of it might have been nothing but excuses. The desires he quietly nursed while thinking of Nate, stroking himself in secret all this time, were no longer something he could hide after pressing his lips against hers even once.

Damon wanted her to say yes quickly. The moment she nodded, he planned to leave the ballroom, push Nate into a space where no one could see, strip off her underwear immediately, and bury himself inside her. Then he would keep going all night until Nate was sobbing for him to stop.

“…You don’t like me, Young lord.”

But the words that came from her next dissolved his lewd fantasy into pale smoke.

“And I’ve decided I’m not going to like you anymore either.”

Damon stared at Nate with a stiffened expression. The motion of grinding against her also stopped dead. Nate glanced up at him and continued quietly.

“You’re so physically healthy that spending a night with me might feel like nothing more than exercise to you, but……”

“……”

“I’m in a position where I need to let go of my feelings for you. If that one night makes it harder to let go, it would be inconvenient for both of us. So I think it would be better if you found someone else.”

The last words took a little effort to say. Even so, Nate managed to speak with a reasonable degree of calm.

Damon said nothing. What he was thinking was difficult to read.

While Damon stared blankly at Nate, she carefully pushed him aside and straightened her dress. She felt a flash of shame when she tucked her bare br*asts, which he pulled out so shamelessly, back into her dress. Her face burned again at the thought of how she let something so beastly happen to her.

Meanwhile, Damon spent quite a long time staring at Nate with a dazed expression. She looked at him and felt puzzled.

When Nate finally finished fixing her dress and sat up straight on the sofa, Damon’s voice came belatedly.

“You’re telling me to go have s*x with another woman……”

He muttered it like he was talking to himself. Nate tilted her head.

“Young lord……?”

Damon let out a small, hollow laugh and then straightened himself up. He turned to Nate slowly, like something only just became clear to him.

“You really meant to forget me, Miss O’Hara.”

She gave him a look that said she didn’t follow.

“…I already told you that.”

“You did. You clearly said so, and yet why am I only accepting it now?”

Did I not believe it? Or did I not want to?

Damon muttered words that seemed directed at Nate and at himself in equal measure.

He sat with a complicated expression for a moment, then turned to her with the air of someone who needed to settle the matter he came to settle.

“So. Are you staying here?”

Nate looked at Damon in silence. Then she swept her gaze past the sofa to the nobles engaged in a full display of s*x. Not that it was only s*x. Even amid all that, some people at other tables were calmly drinking or playing games. Lilia was among them.

Nate took in the scene and arrived at her answer without much difficulty.

“…No.”

Only then did Damon nod. He rose from his seat and held out his hand to her. Nate hesitated, unable to take it right away, and he gave a small smile.

“I’m not asking for s*x. I’ll just see you out.”

Only then did she carefully take his hand.

Damon swallowed a bitter laugh to himself. Not long ago, Nate O’Hara was the one with unrequited feelings for him. And now here was Damon Preston, the one who threw himself at her asking for s*x. He found the situation deeply humiliating.

‘Who the f*ck said I was chasing after her? Who’s the one losing out on s*x with me.’

Damon told himself it was obviously Nate’s loss. There were so many women desperate to sleep with him.

Once they stepped outside the hotel, Nate opened her mouth.

“Thank you, Young lord.”

With those words, she turned away without the slightest trace of lingering.

The carriage Nate came in was waiting right in front of the hotel. It looked exactly like she came prepared to leave immediately if Ombra turned out to be no place to spend time in.

Damon watched her get into the carriage and disappear with a dumbstruck expression.

“…She actually left.”

Like I wasn’t even worth a glance back.

The words came out of Damon hollow and deflated.

He couldn’t take his eyes off the spot where she vanished. Even with her gone, his c*ck stayed stubbornly hard and showed no sign of going down.