Chapter 9

“What did I do?”

Her sense of unfairness surged up, making her voice snap sharply.

“Ha.”

Raymond let out a scornful breath as he looked down at her.

His laugh was oddly mixed with ridicule and anger.

“Do you really want to pretend you don’t know?”

In the end, Diana’s irritation flared sharply as well.

“I’m asking because I don’t know!”

“You really do make a mockery of people to the very end.”

At that moment Raymond stepped one pace closer, and as Diana had been retreating little by little, the back of her thigh struck the edge of a desk.

The gaze coming straight down at her from right in front of her was razor-sharp.

“Ha. No, you’re the one making yourself ridiculous. Dragging along someone who was passing by in a perfectly good mood and getting angry out of nowhere.”

Diana lifted her chin without backing down.

Her voice came out like a retort, sharp with her refusal to lose.

“In a good mood?”

But perhaps those words touched some nerve in him, because Raymond suddenly frowned deeply and asked back.

“……”

For a moment, Diana could not answer.

Just a moment ago she had been angrily snapping back at his dismissive words, but thinking about it, it was not as though she had done nothing wrong to him.

Her forcibly raised eyes gradually stiffened before that icy expression.

She was not entirely in the right either.

The gaze she had been forcing herself to meet trembled faintly, then at last slid downward toward the floor.

“Ha, haha.”

Watching that, Raymond let out a laugh as if dumbfounded.

“But what should I do.”

He slowly tightened his grip on the wrist he was holding and bent even closer.

Already blocked by the desk with nowhere left to retreat, Diana let out a strained breath.

“If you paid me money, then it’s not you who got served, it’s me.”

“……What?”

Unable to follow the flow of the conversation, Diana lifted her head.

At that moment, Raymond’s hand roughly grabbed her chin, then pulled at the back of her neck.

“……Uh!”

A short sound escaped her like her breath had caught.

The next moment, a hot and rough sensation dug deeply into the line of her neck.

As if he had no intention at all of listening to what she said, Raymond suddenly began sucking hard at the back of her neck.

“……Hng, w-wait.”

At the searing hot breath along her neck and the slick brush of his tongue, her shoulders trembled on their own in small shivers.

She grabbed onto him and barely supported her weakening body against him as he pressed in deeper and deeper, but the heat transmitted through their closely pressed bodies only made her thoughts more scattered.

Everything was far too close.

“Haa. Haa.”

She could feel his firm body through where they were pressed together.

Every nerve in every place they touched sharpened sensitively.

To make matters worse, as her n*pples, rising of their own accord, rubbed against Raymond’s flat chest, her breathing broke apart.

Diana squeezed her eyes shut.

She was flustered.

Had her body somehow already become trained from matching lower bodies just once, that even while panting, it moved on its own in response to the tingling stimulation?

“Ung!”

Then, the moment Raymond’s firm knee pushed between her closed legs, the pressure reaching her made her mind turn completely white.

The sensation that had driven her into bliss yesterday was trying to surge up violently again.

“Wait, just wait! Hng……”

In instinctive fear, Diana hurriedly pushed at his chest with both hands.

But the large body before her did not retreat even a little.

If anything, he only pressed himself closer still, trapping her so she could not move.

“Wh-what are you doing right now!”

Diana shouted with difficulty, barely hanging on to her slipping reason.

“Why. You were quietly staying still because you liked it just a moment ago.”

But Raymond merely looked down at her, a cold smile lingering at the corners of his lips.

What he was doing below was becoming more and more persistent.

“Wh-who said I liked it……”

Twisting her body at the stimulation rising from the tips of her toes, Diana protested with difficulty.

At some point, her face had grown red and heated.

“Really? Your body is this honest.”

“Hng, th-that’s because you suddenly, hng, grabbed someone minding their own business and started doing this.”

“Doing this? What is ‘this’?”

Raymond looked down at her with sunken eyes and steadily stimulated her below.

At the stubbornly invading sensation, her spine trembled on its own.

“You liked it more last night.”

“Th-that……”

For a moment Diana forgot how to answer.

Raymond was right.

Yesterday, she had been the one who kissed him first because it felt good and eagerly joined with him.

But that did not mean she wanted to be pushed back like this.

She was the type who could not rest easy unless she struck back at least once.

“Y-you’re doing this even after I nursed you? Have you no conscience?”

Diana burst out, pounding at Raymond’s chest.

His shirt wrinkled beneath her hands, but Raymond did not budge in the slightest.

Instead, he seized her wrist in an instant and shoved her back toward the wall again.

“Ah!”

“Conscience?”

Diana cried out in pain, but Raymond only lazily curled up the corner of his mouth.

“Who was it that came at me first?”

“That was because you……”

Diana started to snap back again in irritation, but when Raymond’s fingertips gripped her waist firmly, her breath caught short.

At that closer distance, the sound of her heartbeat pounded noisily.

“So is this your way of saying you’ve done enough?”

Before the words had even fully ended, Raymond pressed his heated lips once more to the back of her neck.

The breath brushing her earlobe spread especially hot.

“No, Diana. I clearly told you to repay me with your body.”

“Hng, ung……”

Diana squeezed her eyes shut.

The sensation had already become familiar, heat spreading through her entire body as if paint had been spilled over it.

Before she knew it, even the hands that had been pushing at Raymond’s chest had gone weak.

“You shouldn’t think it would end with just one night.”

But when the conversation reached that point, irritation suddenly surged even through Diana’s dizzy head.

‘Seriously, how long is this going to go on……’

She admitted she was in the wrong.

But this was not what she had wanted.

What she had wanted to see, and wanted to have, was that quiet and pretty face helplessly shedding tears, swept away by emotion.

Not this obnoxious face looking down at her now and pressing her like this.

“Y-you rabbit-like thing!”

At that thought, Diana suddenly lifted her head, then immediately ducked it sharply.

That meant she slammed her forehead very hard straight into Raymond’s forehead.

At the unexpected headbutt, Raymond’s upper body lurched far backward.

“You even fainted in the middle of it!”

“……What?”

When Diana shouted again, Raymond, now holding a hand over his forehead that had quickly turned red, stared at her in disbelief.

Strictly speaking, they had both gone all the way first, and only afterward had he lost consciousness, and at the time he had been in no condition to properly support his aching body.

So it was not simply a matter of stamina or anything like that.

More than anyone, Diana herself knew that best.

What had left her breathless until the very end last night had clearly been Raymond’s impressive lower half.

But at this moment, there seemed to be no better words than these to get under his skin.

“I can understand if your stamina is so weak that you just collapsed on your own, but after that, isn’t it a bit much to grab someone and talk about one night or whatever?”

Diana shouted without backing down in the slightest.

Of course, thanks to Raymond’s exceptional lower body, last night had been blissful, and because of that, those sensations had kept coming back to her mind even until this morning, to the point that they had nearly ruined her condition for the exam.

Even so, right now, what mattered more was landing a blow to that arrogant face of his.

“Ha.”

Looking dumbfounded, Raymond held his forehead and glared at her.

“So if you feel that wronged, then instead of talking about service or whatever with something that can’t even function properly, come up with a better method first.”

Catching her heavy breath, Diana hurled that at him one last time.

“Then I’m leaving.”

As soon as she finished speaking, she turned away without lingering.

The classroom door, which had stayed shut the whole time, flew open, and the cold air from the hallway rushed inside.

Only then did it really hit her how hot the inside of the classroom had been.

For the next several days after that, Diana was unable to properly run into Raymond.

Whether in the hallways or the classroom, it was strangely difficult to spot him anywhere.

‘He must be sick somewhere again.’

At times, she briefly felt worried, but Diana did not bother looking into the reason.

Since when had she ever been the type to think about him?

If anything, this was better for her.

After what had happened that day in the empty classroom, she had repeatedly resolved never again to be swayed by that unpleasant face of his.

Besides, vacation was now only a day away.

In just a few more days, she would not have to see that face for a while.

Maybe because she kept repeating those thoughts to herself, Diana’s heart was able to feel a little lighter for the first time in several days.

In fact, that state lasted right up until the moment she was suddenly called into the professor’s office.

“Ah, you’re here, Miss Everhart.”

The professor, who had been busily sorting papers, smiled at her from behind his glasses.

“I heard you had something to say to me.”

Sitting down, Diana looked at the professor across the steaming teacup between them.

“Yes. I have a favor to ask of you, Miss Everhart.”

“A favor?”

“I’d like you to act as Black’s sparring partner during the vacation.”

“What?”

At the completely unexpected topic, Diana’s mouth fell open and stiffened.