It was unmistakably a kiss he had left on her in the dream.

He had known that her skin was delicate enough to mark at the slightest touch. And yet he had done it deliberately, wanting to leave a trace of himself on her neck.

Because it was a dream.

Because in a dream, she could be his, and he could be hers.

That was why he had left it.

And yet.

“Were you dreaming the same dream? No, were you being affected by the dream too? How is that even possible.”

“I didn’t pay enough attention to the old fairy tale that says you should never enter a fog-covered forest on a moonless night.”

“……”

Leon lifted his head, not quite following what she meant.

“The incubus’s curse.”

“Oh.”

Only then did the cruel fairy tale curse he had heard as a child come back to him, and he met Lisette’s eyes.

Inside her eyes lived the woman from his dreams. The sight of her made his body feel like it was catching fire in an instant. His manhood hardened, and a churning, consuming desire filled his lower abdomen to the brim.

He wanted to have her.

He wanted to claim her in reality, not in a dream.

He wanted to be repaid for every moment of suffering he had endured until now.

A desire that felt like it would drive him mad swirled through his mind, and yet.

“It is only a dream.”

The rational awareness that he must never, under any circumstances, bring this dream into reality still remained.

‘What could someone like you ever give Lisette?’

‘Even so, once the family casts you out, all you’ll ever be is a mercenary.’

‘And what, do you plan to earn your love by playing mercenary?’

And alongside those thoughts, Théodore’s words rang in his ears.

He had heard how much she had suffered over the past three years. That was precisely why he could not bring that pain down on her again.

The label of being the woman of a lowly escort with no name and no lineage.

‘Never.’

Leon pressed down on the cut he had made on his arm just moments ago to calm the dream, using the pain to bring himself back, and forced his lips open with great effort.

“Please go ba…”

“No.”

“Miss!”

His voice rose slightly. Lisette looked up at him. Her large eyes looked ready to spill over with tears at any moment, and yet.

“No. I’m not going.”

Despite the tears gathering at the corners of her eyes, the gaze she fixed on him looked more resolute than he had ever seen it.

There was not a trace of wavering in her eyes. He pressed down hard on the wound on his arm again and pushed her away.

“Please go back. It is all nothing but a useless dream. So stop thinking strange things and…”

“I get wet.”

She grabbed hold of the hand pushing her away and looked at him, the corners of her eyes flushed red.

“I get wet too. Every morning when I wake up from the dream. Every single time.”

“……”

“The places you touched in the dream ache and itch and I don’t know what to do with myself. Every night I want you in the dream and then I wake up, and it’s so unbearable I think I’m going to lose my mind. Me too, just like you.”

She lifted her face with eyes full of unshed tears.

“It’s hard, Leon.”

“……”

“So help me break free of the curse.”

The curse.

At Lisette’s words, Leon met her eyes.

Did she know how sweet that word sounded to him right now? The temptation to give in and let himself be swept away by that word, by the word curse, felt nearly impossible to resist.

His mind felt like it was melting into a haze.

Pressing on the shallow cut to dull his senses with pain was no longer enough to help him find reason in this moment. He just wanted to give in to those words.

Just.

“Leon.”

“……”

“Help me… ngh.”

The trembling of Lisette’s hands gripping his, and the tears that had filled her eyes spilling down her cheeks in that moment, snapped the thread of his reason with a sharp crack.

He could not think of anything else. He placed his hand against her cheek and kissed her. He sucked at her lips and explored her with his tongue. She was sweet.

In the dream, no matter how many times he drank from her, the thirst never left him, and no matter how many times he held her it was never enough to quench it. But in this single moment, he felt his entire body melting away.

Could he ever bring himself to stop this maddening moment?

“Ha.”

He pressed through her parted lips and sucked at every corner of her mouth, drinking her in.

He wanted to press closer.

No, pressing closer was not enough. The urge to swallow her whole seized him, and his throat burned and his breath ran short. His hand gripping her neck tightened, and he sucked at her lips and pulled her harder into his arms.

Each breath he took was edged with urgency. The unhurried man from the dreams was nowhere to be found. Perhaps he had never existed to begin with.

When it came to her, he had never once been in control.

“Ha.”

And Lisette felt his urgency too. The hands that should have touched her gently were crushing her without knowing what to do with themselves, pulling her toward him with rough desperation.

But she did not dislike it. She preferred him like this to the Leon who was always composed, always keeping his distance, always handling her with careful restraint. His lips consuming her, wanting her so badly it seemed to drive him out of his mind, and his hands.

‘I like it.’

Even in the dream she had felt ready to die of embarrassment, but when he teased her with words that bordered on obscene, she had burned even hotter and felt her lower abdomen fill with heat. It was a different kind of stimulation from when he had sucked at her body directly.

‘Would he get excited if I said something like that?’

Lisette opened her eyes a sliver and cupped his cheek. Through his parted lips she felt breath heavy with heat.

“Mi…”

“I like it when you suck on me.”

She had not been able to part her lips in the dream, too mortified to speak, but now she held his gaze. Even as she said the words, something tingled below, and she bit her lip.

“This is a dream, isn’t it.”

He said it in a fractured voice.

“It has to be a dream. Otherwise I really…”

He swallowed the rest of what he could not bring himself to say and stared at Lisette. And Lisette understood what those unspoken words were.

‘That he would not be able to give her up.’

But that was not what mattered right now.

What mattered was breaking free of this curse together.

Right, once they broke free of this curse, it would not matter whether this was a dream or reality. So letting him believe this was a dream.

“Yes, that’s right. It’s a dream.”

Would be the way to ease his guilt.

And for Lisette herself, it was a promise that she would not let herself draw any closer to him than this.

Because it was a dream.

A dream that would end the moment they woke.

She would simply think of it as a very long dream.

“So hold me.”

Lisette cupped his cheek and whispered.

“Hold me, Leon. Set me free from the curse.”

“……”

Leon looked at her in silence for a long moment at her desperate plea, then lifted the hand she had placed on his cheek and pressed a deep kiss into her palm. At that deep, unhurried kiss, Lisette drew in a breath, and then.

“All things.”

He slipped his hand behind her knees where she sat in his arms and rose to his feet, lifting her with him.

“Are as you will, my lady.”

* * *

Leon carried Lisette carefully and laid her down on the bed.

It was a space that could barely be called a bedroom, just enough to lay one body down. And the room, which had grown even more wrecked over the past several days, was torn and broken in every corner with nothing left intact. Even the cloth on the bed was in tatters. Looking at Lisette lying in that shabby space, he felt his breath seize in his chest.

‘Is this real?’

“Miss.”

“Don’t think about other things. You know.”

Lisette seemed to sense what was going through his mind and shook her head, reaching out to touch his cheek.

“That it has to be you.”

At her words, looking up at him, Leon swallowed. Her scent, carried on her breath, clung to his throat like dry air. His emotions were in disarray, burning him from the inside, and yet his manhood kept growing harder.

It was a desire that made it impossible to think clearly about whether crossing this line was something he was allowed to do. These were the obscene imaginings he had suppressed for so long, the dreams he had dreamed with her at the center, and they all came pouring into his mind at once.

“You will regret this.”

Leon squeezed his eyes shut and opened them, grinding his back teeth as he murmured the words.

Whether he said it to her or to himself was hard to say, but.

“I won’t regret it.”

She said she would not regret it.

She shook her head and looked at him exactly the way she had the first moment she appeared before him.

“I won’t regret it. Leon. So… ngh.”

Before she could finish saying it again, he buried his face in her neck and sank his teeth in. He pressed his lips to the most vulnerable part of her neck, like a predator striking at a vital point, and sucked hard. He licked at the pulse beating beneath the skin, and wrapped his arms around her waist as she twisted helplessly under the sensation he gave her.