The next day, Damon kept pacing the same stretch of his bedroom. His attendant Marcus watched him and furrowed his brow.

“Young master, why are you in such a state? Are you in heat or something?”

Rather than scold Marcus for the impertinent question, Damon dropped his gaze to check his lower half. Just as Marcus said, his c*ck was half-hard again.

“Looks like it. I’ve been thinking about Miss O’Hara since yesterday……”

Damon muttered with a voice that carried no particular surprise. It was the manner of someone for whom getting aroused over Nate was already part of daily life.

Marcus clicked his tongue in exasperation.

“She’s someone you hurt, and she finally let go of her feelings. She’d be shocked to know you’ve been privately in heat over her this whole time.”

“She let go of her feelings…… That was real……?”

Damon asked with a blank expression. Marcus tilted his head, puzzled.

“What’s gotten into you? You’ve been off ever since you came back from Ombra yesterday.”

“What’s… off about me……?”

“You seem very unsettled and anxious. Like a puppy that lost its owner.”

“I’m… a puppy?”

So the owner is Nate O’Hara……?

Damon reflexively pictured Nate putting a leash on him. He also pictured himself clinging to her side like a leech, desperate not to be abandoned.

But in the end, Nate gave up on the disobedient puppy Damon Preston and let go of the leash she held. She left without looking back. Damon Preston was abandoned. By Nate O’Hara.

“…D*mn.”

He understood now. Nate had no intention of turning her feelings back toward him. Even when spring passed and summer came, she wouldn’t confess to him again.

Not just summer. Autumn, winter, the next year. She no longer had any intention of opening her heart to him. Five years of unrequited love truly reached its end.

“It was real. I was abandoned by Miss O’Hara……”

Damon muttered with a stunned expression. Marcus responded like he just heard the strangest thing.

“What are you talking about? Miss O’Hara didn’t abandon you. You abandoned Miss O’Hara.”

But Damon’s brow creased in protest.

“When? I never abandoned Miss O’Hara.”

Marcus let out a short laugh.

“You’ve already forgotten? You turned down Miss O’Hara’s confessions for five years.”

“Even if I turned her down, if she liked me, shouldn’t she keep her feelings? Five years, ten years, whatever.”

“I suppose that means she’s decided she no longer likes you.”

Marcus delivered the devastating statement with complete ease. Of course, devastating only applied to Damon.

‘Why am I… shocked……’

He couldn’t make sense of his own reaction, yet the anxiety that Nate was genuinely trying not to like him anymore pressed in on him.

At the same time, the memory of her soft lips and small tongue from the night before, and her smooth br*asts and cute n*pples, came flooding back. Damon’s c*ck swelled taut to the point of bursting. The sensation of filling his underwear to capacity was not particularly pleasant.

‘She blushed like that when I kissed her…… She didn’t know what to do with herself when I sucked her n*pples……’

Or was that wrong? Maybe it was nothing more than something his aroused mind invented.

Damon’s thoughts grew tangled. He turned to Marcus with sudden urgency.

“Go get me every invitation that’s arrived at the estate right now. No, not all of them. Just the ones Miss O’Hara is likely to attend.”

Marcus looked puzzled.

“Party invitations Miss O’Hara is likely to attend? Is this because you want to see her?”

“Yeah.”

Damon answered without any attempt to hide it. Marcus’s brow pinched slightly at that.

“If you want to see Miss O’Hara, you could just send a letter directly to the count’s estate and arrange a meeting. Why go to the trouble of sneaking into parties she attends like some kind of freeloader?”

Marcus shrugged and added, “It was endearing when Miss O’Hara did it, but when you do it, it looks a little pathetic, young master.”

Damon stared at him blankly and said quietly,

“If you want to be thrown out of the ducal house, Marcus, you can just say so.”

Marcus flinched and laughed awkwardly in his defense.

“No, everything I said was out of concern for you, young master. I have absolutely no desire to be thrown out.”

Marcus moved quickly and went to look through the invitations that arrived for him.

When Marcus sorted out the party invitations Nate was likely to attend and brought them over, Damon took them to the table. Marcus watched him study them with a serious expression and asked,

“But why do you insist on meeting her at a party?”

Damon answered without looking up.

“Miss O’Hara said she wants to forget me. Going to her estate directly would be inconsiderate. So I need to run into her as naturally as possible. Without making her feel like she needs to be on guard around me.”

“Why go that far just to see her?”

“Because Miss O’Hara is really trying to forget me.”

“Is that a problem?”

“Of course it is.”

“Why?”

“Because……!”

Damon stopped short.

Right…… Why is it a problem if she forgets me?

He stared blankly into the air, the invitation still in his hands. Marcus asked in a puzzled voice, “Could it be that you like Miss O’Hara, young master?”

“…What?”

Damon looked up with a stunned expression. He looked like a man hearing something he never once considered.

‘I… like Miss O’Hara……?’

He never thought about it. Not just Nate. The idea of genuinely liking anyone at all…….

He met many young ladies over the years, but all of it was time spent with light, passing feelings. As proof of that, not a single young lady stayed by his side for long. Young ladies certainly clung to him often, desperate to maintain their connection with Damon, but he never let himself be caught.

From the start, Damon kept up such a reckless string of women as a way to spite his parents, who tried to tarnish the Preston name and confine him. There was also the fierce desire to taste some semblance of freedom. His surroundings shaped him into that.

And yet. Could someone like him genuinely come to like another person?

“Does that even make sense? And of all people, Nate O’Hara……”

But unlike the stunned Damon, Marcus didn’t seem to find it strange at all. He spoke in an unbothered tone.

“Honestly, I always thought you were very, deeply, extremely interested in Miss O’Hara from the very beginning. Isn’t that why you did that thing every day while thinking of her?”

The thing Marcus referred to was stroking himself while thinking of Nate. But Damon spent five years doing it out of habit, so he couldn’t grasp how that connected to being interested in Nate.

“What are you talking about? If I liked Miss O’Hara, why would I have turned down her confessions all this time?”

“Because you were hurt when Miss O’Hara ignored your greeting at the start, young master. You went through a kind of denial phase, you could say.”

Damon was about to fire back immediately, but Marcus gave a small scornful laugh and added,

“Have you forgotten? You were in a foul mood for days over not being able to properly exchange greetings with Miss O’Hara that first time.”

—

T/N: out of all the novels I translated, this is the first time I’ve seen a personal attendant checking whether his lord’s c*ck is hard or not. there truly is a first time for everything.