The next day, Nate sat alone at the bedroom vanity, her expression blank. What happened with Damon the day before refused to leave her mind.

What on earth happened to me?

Her thoughts were a mess.

“Why would Young Lord Preston…….”

When she first met him at Hotel Ombra, she assumed he simply acted out to show her how dangerous the place was. That was why he pressed his lips to hers and tormented her chest……

But yesterday there was no particular reason. Nate visited the Lovitz Marquisate to celebrate Lilia’s birthday, and when Damon brought up what happened at Ombra in front of Roderick, she dragged him to another room to stop him.

And there, Damon kissed her, stimulated her chest, and used his mouth on a place no one’s hands ever touched before.

The pleasure she felt then was still vivid. She had the strange sensation that the screaming m*ans she let out still echoed in her ears. Nate’s face flushed red all over again.

“I shouldn’t be like this……. I decided to forget Young Lord Preston.”

Nate could only conclude that Damon simply got swept up in the moment. He was a man of vigorous appetites, after all.

Of course, he surprisingly claimed to still be a v*rgin, but after letting him use his mouth on her so thoroughly yesterday, she doubted even that. Could a man who acted like such a beast really be a v*rgin?

Nate stared at her reflection in the mirror. A red bruise near her collarbone remained, proof that what happened with him yesterday was no dream. Her maid Wendy covered it with makeup, but to Nate’s eyes the mark was all too visible.

She let out a small sigh and took a gold brooch from her jewelry box. It looked quite valuable, but the setting where a gemstone should have been was empty.

“Damon…….”

Nate carefully breathed out the name he told her to call him by. The Damon in her mind right now was not the tall, beast-like man she met yesterday, but the small boy she knew as a child.

“Back then, he seemed like such a sweet child…….”

How did he end up becoming such a dissolute man?

When she first met him, the situation was so dire that both she and Damon were terrified. But in her memory, Damon was more frightened. So she kept trying to reassure him.

In the end, they were rescued from the Preston ducal house. Around the same time, the location where she was taken from the Count O’Hara family was also found.

Damon was swept away by the people of the ducal house before he could properly say goodbye to Nate. And she happened to pick up a brooch he dropped on his way out. That was all young Damon left her.

Gazing at the brooch, Nate took a necklace from her jewelry box. She separated the chain from the pendant, then found the loop on the brooch where a chain could thread through and connected it there in place of the pendant.

Nate hung the brooch in front of the vanity mirror. Deliberately, somewhere easy to see.

“I’ll leave it like this for a few days and then put it away…….”

She murmured, resting her chin in her hand as she looked at the brooch.

She thought about whether she should return it to Damon, but in the end even that felt like an excuse she made up just to stay entangled with him.

It was already an old thing. On top of that, the brooch was damaged, as though telling the story of that terrible ordeal. That was why the gemstone was gone too. As they escaped the place where she was taken, the brooch fell to the floor, and the stone disappeared with it.

This brooch was no longer of any use to Damon. He was not a child anymore, and there were plenty of things to replace a broken brooch.

“The day I put the brooch away is the day I completely erase my feelings for Young Lord Preston.”

Nate recited it softly, like a vow. She told herself that what happened yesterday was simply an accident. She gazed at the brooch a little longer, then finally rose from her seat.

* * *

Nate deliberately avoided Damon. She worried that if she was around him again, she might get swept up in the moment and do something foolish. So whenever he tried to greet her, she struck up a conversation with another noble and slipped away, and whenever Damon was nearby, she immediately moved somewhere else.

Damon showed no particular reaction. Nate told herself that was to be expected. He had no reason to be bothered just because he couldn’t exchange a few words with her. One person missing from his side wouldn’t make much difference.

Nate visited Hotel Ombra again. This time, however, she entered not with Lilia but with Roderick.

“Just stay with me, Nate. Ombra is a wonderful place to meet new people, though it can feel a little overwhelming. But for two people who are already close, it’s a perfect place to close the distance even further.”

Nate nodded awkwardly at Roderick’s words. The reason she found herself agreeing that Ombra closed the distance between men and women was, unfortunately, not because Roderick was persuasive, but because she knew it from experience. Such as the time she shared her first kiss with Damon Preston in this very place……

‘No. Don’t think about Young Lord Preston.’

Nate thought it to herself, like a mantra.

Today, she was determined to grow closer to Roderick by any means. She figured that if she did, erasing Damon from her heart might be a little easier.

She stepped inside Ombra with Roderick and they took a table together. Roderick said he wanted her to feel comfortable and drew the curtains installed at each table, blocking the view from outside.

“How is this? With just the two of us like this, it feels like we’re the only ones here, doesn’t it?”

Roderick said with a smile. Rather than sitting across from Nate, he came around and settled in right beside her.

Nate looked at him with an uncomfortable expression and shifted slightly away. But he noticed and immediately slid over to close the gap again.

“Nate, your hands are really small. Mine are quite large. Want to compare?”

“Pardon?”

Roderick naturally brought his hand up against Nate’s.

“Well? My hand is big, isn’t it?”

“Oh……. It is.”

“It’s not just my hand that’s big.”

“Pardon?”

Nate kept asking him to repeat himself like a fool. Roderick leaned his face close to hers and whispered into her ear, breathing warm air against it.

“Other things are big too. Big enough to satisfy a woman.”

“Wh, what exactly is big…….”

“What do you think, Nate?”

He laughed at her innocent question, finding it endearing. Then he gently brushed her hair aside.

“Nate, since your hands are small, is that place small too?”

“…….”

“Of course it would be, since you’ve never taken a man before. It must be incredibly tight and warm. I want to feel it soon.”

Roderick said this and cupped her cheek in his hand. She stared at his lips drawing toward her with a flustered expression.

In the end, when Roderick’s lips were nearly upon hers, Nate shot to her feet. Roderick furrowed his brow and looked up at her. Nate hurriedly opened her mouth.

“S, sorry, Roderick……. I just need to step outside for a moment…….”

Then she fled from the table.

Pulling the curtain aside and stepping out, Nate happened to lock eyes with Damon, who was just entering Ombra, led by the hand of another young noblewoman.

He had been wearing a look of obvious boredom, but his expression shifted to surprise, and then his gaze swept to where Nate had been sitting. It seemed he spotted Roderick through the curtain. Damon’s expression hardened into something cold.

But Nate paid him no mind and kept walking. She just wanted to step outside for some fresh air.

Then Damon turned on his heel, took her hand in his, and walked her out of the hall with him. The young noblewoman he came with could only stare in bewilderment at the spot where the two of them disappeared.

Nate called after him in a startled, urgent voice.

“Young Lord Preston, what do you think you’re doing……!”

But Damon gave no sign of hearing her. He looked as though something made him thoroughly angry.

Nate stared at him in confusion, then dropped her gaze to her own hand, the one he was holding.