The heat was unbearable. Amel panted heavily, overwhelmed by it.

“Lift your waist.”

When she lay face down on the bed, her body slid forward each time he thr*st from behind. Her chest was pressed flat against the mattress, and her arms gave out beneath her. Every time it happened, her head thudded against the pillow, making her vision swim and her stomach churn.

“……Ah, ngh! A little gentler…….”

“What did you say? I couldn’t hear you.”

Cervel said this as he held on to Amel’s collapsing hips. He had heard her perfectly well and was only pretending otherwise. He was that cruel.

Amel lay facedown, her breath trembling. When Cervel pressed his body against hers, the penetration went even deeper. Amel gave in to him from behind and crawled forward, whimpering.

“Hngh, ah! I can’t take any more…… ah!”

It felt as though she was going to be completely torn apart down there. Ah, ahhh, she really couldn’t take any more. It had already been four hours. Her tender inner walls felt raw and sore, as though they had been scraped away.

Amel’s arms and legs trembled violently. Seeing this, Cervel slowed down.

Squish. Squish, squish.

Amel’s trembling gradually subsided as well. Cervel slowly withdrew.

As he pulled out, Amel felt hollow and empty below. A weak sigh escaped her.

“Haa……”

When Amel let out a small m*an, Cervel bit her earlobe from behind and asked,

“Are you all right?”

Amel gave a faint nod, and Cervel let out a quiet laugh. Something about it felt unsettling.

Ah!

He thr*st all the way in at once. Then, from behind, he spread her buttocks apart and drove into her repeatedly. Amel raised her hips and endured it.

She could vividly imagine Cervel looking down at the cleft between her buttocks from behind. When Amel tried to crawl away using her arms, Cervel grabbed her hips and pulled her back.

Amel could only clutch helplessly at the blanket with her fingers. It was too deep. Far too deep. It felt as though even the tiny creases in her brain were being smoothed flat.

Amel trembled beneath the overwhelming fullness. She felt completely filled, as though Cervel had reached all the way into her stomach.

‘My head feels like it’s melting. I can’t think straight. How did I end up here, being shaken around so shamelessly like this?’

Her waist kept giving out. Whenever her hips sank as though they were collapsing, Cervel bit down hard on her delicate shoulder.

“Hngh!”

“Get a hold of yourself.”

Amel clenched tightly around him and trembled as she reached her cl*max. Her entire body curled inward, tensing all the way to her toes. Her mouth fell open as she trembled through the overwhelming pleasure.

Even after Cervel withdrew, the spasms wouldn’t subside, leaving Amel’s arms and legs trembling.

Her mind was a complete blank. How had things ended up like this? Right. It all went back to a few days ago.

***

“Breaking off the engagement? Now? After you’ve already passed marriageable age and been engaged for ten whole years?!”

Her mother reclined on the sofa in the drawing room, pressing a hand to her forehead. Sitting across from her, Amel fidgeted with a teacup whose contents had long since gone cold.

“I’m sorry about the broken engagement. But it’s not as though I was the one who decided to call it off.”

Yesterday, her former fiancé, Daniel, had come to the house.

Lord Daniel Sidentel.

He was an ordinary-looking man with dark, yellowish-brown hair and eyes. His unruly hair resembled faded autumn leaves.

Daniel had been insufferable right to the very end.

“Break off the engagement with me.”

A month before their wedding, Daniel had called off the marriage and said,

“Liz is pregnant. But I can’t let my unborn child be branded an illegitimate child. The baby hasn’t done anything wrong.”

Even as he called off the wedding, Daniel looked utterly relieved.

Lady Liz.

She was the lover Daniel adored more than anything.

She was a woman with curly, vivid red hair and lips as fresh as the petals of a withered rose.

Recently, that woman had become pregnant.

“Liz is a poor thing. If she doesn’t have me, her life will be even more miserable. But if I go ahead and marry you like this, what will happen to Liz? And wouldn’t that mean our unborn child would have no choice but to be illegitimate?”

“Your pregnancy is a matter between you and that woman. It’s not something you can expect me to understand. All we need to do is look at the facts of our relationship.”

The people involved had acted hastily, and so had their love. Perhaps they were ashamed of themselves, because at first, they insisted there was nothing between them.

But then they embraced one another and whispered words of affection, and within just three months, their love had blossomed.

Then Liz became pregnant.

Amel and Daniel had been engaged for ten years. Ten years. They had spent that long together, having been engaged at the age of fifteen. Even if there had been no love between them, there was still a lingering attachment born from familiarity and resentment. But now, even that was gone.

Daniel had finally brought their long, stagnant relationship to an end.

“I’ll make sure you receive a generous settlement for the broken engagement.”

And so, as of yesterday, Amel’s engagement to Daniel had officially come to an end.

“You’re doing it again! Where are you looking when I’m talking to you?”

Amel let out a long sigh. Her mother was fanning herself, declaring the whole affair a disgrace, and the sight of her furious face was exhausting Amel as well.

Her mother snapped at her.

“Since yesterday, whenever people gather, all they talk about is your broken engagement! They’re saying some poor country girl showed up and ruined your marriage!”

A poor country girl. It was a mocking reference to Lady Liz.

A poor baron’s daughter from the countryside. Lady Liz, who had made her debut at a ball for the first time at the age of twenty-one. That was the woman they were talking about.

“I can’t even hold my head up in public because I’m so ashamed!”

Amel pressed and rubbed her throbbing temples.

“How have you conducted yourself all this time?! If you’d behaved properly, would you have given your heart to some ridiculous little infatuation like that?!”

“You said it was just a passing breeze, something that would blow over. You turned a blind eye to it too, Mother.”

Her mother had been complicit in their relationship.

She had told Amel to overlook it, saying that everyone kept secret lovers even after getting married anyway.

“I tried, too. I tried, but…….”

“How dare you! Are you talking back to me?! You wasted all those years, ruined the wedding just one month before it was supposed to happen, and now you’re going against me, too?!”

Her mother pressed her fists repeatedly against her solar plexus in a fit of outrage.

At times like this, it was better to stay quiet.

Her mother kept screaming at the top of her lungs in anger, making Amel’s ears ring. If Amel snapped back with even a few words about how tiresome this was, the conversation would only drag on longer.

Her mother’s bright-red tongue kept spitting out one accusation after another, but all Amel could hear was the buzzing in her ears. The sound rustled and scraped, like insects gnawing away at her ears.

By the time the imaginary insects finally disappeared and the ringing in her ears began to fade, her mother had ordered her to leave.

“Go somewhere far away for a few months and consider it a period of recuperation. I’ll contact you once things have quieted down.”

Her mother had taken her time getting to the point.

“Stay out there and reflect on your actions.”

Only after being dismissed was Amel finally able to return to her room.

“Have you finished speaking with your mother, my lady?”

When Amel entered her room, her maid, Lilline, was waiting for her.

“My lady?”

“Do you have a handkerchief?”

“Here you are.”

Amel rubbed her hands together repeatedly. They were cold. Cold, yet sweaty. It was a sign that she was nervous. She took the handkerchief from Lilline and wiped her hands.

Whenever Amel saw her mother, her thoughts became a mess. Her mother had turned a blind eye to her fiancé’s affair all this time, but now that the marriage had fallen through, she was finally demanding to know what Amel had been doing all this while.

“How is Madam?”

“How do you think? She’s furious.”

“Did you get scolded badly?”

“Yes. Very badly.”

Amel massaged her stiff shoulders and gave a detached smile.

“Madam is being too harsh. Why is she scolding you, my lady? The broken engagement wasn’t your fault. You were just minding your own business and got caught up in this mess… How could she treat you like this?”

Amel pressed the center of her palm between her thumb and forefinger as she gazed toward the terrace window. The sunlight made her eyes sting. Her ash-gray hair was reflected in the clear glass.

Her skin was thin and translucent, and her body was flawless. Pale and delicate. She had the noble bearing of someone born into aristocracy who had never known hardship.

Amel gave her a faint smile.

It was only a broken engagement. It was a relief that it had ended. At least it had stopped before they got married.

“It’s a good thing we ended it here.”

Amel looked around the room and noticed the packed luggage.

“What about the luggage?”

“It’s all packed.”

“Load it onto the carriage.”

“Are you leaving right away?”

“Yes. The carriage is already waiting, so just load everything up and we’ll leave.”

“Goodness, you’re really leaving just like this?”

“Let’s think of it as going away to recuperate.”

Perhaps Lilline had heard from Madam in advance, because she had already packed everything Amel would be taking with her.

“How is this recuperation? It’s house arrest.”

“You’ll hurt my feelings if you put it that way. Let’s call it recuperation.”

Her mother had told her to think of it as going away to recuperate, but in reality, it was a punishment.

The capital was still buzzing.

Now that a scandal had erupted, the gossips would keep talking about it for quite some time.

With her fiancé having an affair and even getting his lover pregnant, it would take time for the scandal to die down.

Though Amel had been miserably cast aside, she was surprisingly calm about it.

Was it because she had expected things to turn out this way?

It had seemed inevitable that they would break off their engagement anyway.

She had a fiancé, but marriage had always been an afterthought. Then her fiancé took a lover and made their relationship so conspicuously public.

So Amel had expected the engagement to end.

And it actually had.

“Let’s just think of it as taking a break.”

And so, she decided to take a break.