Chapter 8

“Mmhh……”

“Hah……”

After finishing dinner and enjoying a light dessert, they had somehow ended up like this.

Not particularly surprising.

The two of them were tangled together on the sofa where their moments of affection had played out before. Their unsteady breathing mingled in the warm, humid air.

As planned, Riley was wearing the low-cut wedding dress, pinned beneath Andrea and thoroughly disheveled.

Andrea had been teasing the rosy tip of her chest with his tongue, and now he pressed his hand between her legs.

He rubbed up and down over the damp fabric of her undergarment, and a faint m*an escaped her as her thighs pressed together.

He pushed the thin cloth aside and slipped his fingers in, and the moment he felt the slick warmth against his fingertips, the tension in his lower abdomen swelled to the point of pain.

“Ugh……”

He looked down at Riley through eyes gone dark and heavy.

Her chest, a little fuller now that she had put on weight, peeked out adorably above the top of the dress. The indecent exposure against the snow-white fabric felt unbearably provocative.

He had been pushed to the very edge of what he could endure.

And the skin below, openly wet with wanting him, was so impossibly soft and hot, hah……

His head was spinning.

Something hot gathered heavily at his core, and the muscles of his lower abdomen pulled with a sharp, aching tension. The veins along his body began to rise.

He was in torment.

She was ignoring all propriety and decorum, seducing him and pressing herself against him like this. Should he just take her here and now? She wanted it too, clearly.

His conflicted fingers moved slowly along the long, wet cleft, and a slick, wet sound rose as the soft flesh parted.

Riley let out a low mmhh…… and arched her back, and her soft chest swayed like yielding jelly before his eyes.

Andrea’s tongue had been winding around the pink tip and pulling at it hard, and his mind had already gone white.

Every part of him wanted to take her roughly, right now.

The fingers rubbing at the small bud below finally pressed gently into the parted folds and slipped inside.

“Hhng.”

The faint trembling that came with the m*an reached him fully and drove his excitement higher. He pulled her slender body tighter against him and deepened the caress.

His fingers, slipping inside like a snake into a hidden place, were gripped by impossibly soft walls, and Andrea’s mind began to blur.

Every time her inner flesh clenched around him instinctively, he let out a rough groan, as though something had closed around his throat.

Riley too whimpered like a small mewling kitten and squirmed in his arms.

Unable to bear it any longer, Andrea undid his straining trousers with one hand.

What sprang free moved with the speed of a hound let off its leash, already flushed and swollen, leaking with want.

“Ugh.”

Rubbing it against the cool satin of her skirt gave some relief from the burning heat, but a deeper, heavier desire pooled in his lower abdomen.

He kept his fingers moving even as he felt his self-control reaching its limit. Each time his middle and ring fingers pressed and dragged against the soft inner walls, Riley’s pinned thighs twitched.

Looking down, he saw her flushed from head to toe, gasping for breath.

The more helpless she looked, the more the urge to take her completely surged up and took hold of him.

“Riley……”

Pinned beneath him and squirming, Riley’s vision went white.

Curiosity, the scheme she had originally planned, all of it had been swept clean from her mind. Her whole body felt like it was melting away under this raw, overwhelming caress, like ice cream dissolving in summer sun.

All that filled her was a pure, simple want to be held by Andrea, warmer and closer.

She was not sure whether it counted as desire, but for a fleeting moment she thought she might genuinely be in love with Andrea.

The touch reaching into her most private place was devastatingly blissful.

She wanted him deeper. She wanted him to fill her completely……

Every time those strong, knuckled fingers moved in a slow, curving motion, her vision went white. Her trembling thighs parted on their own.

A strange, ticklish heat kept pooling inside her, a throbbing ache she could not endure without release.

Then at last it spilled over, rippling across the skin of her back and making Riley whimper helplessly.

Her hips moved on their own, following the rhythm of the fingers pressing deep inside her.

Hhng…… so this is why Captain Alain loved this so much……

She tilted her head back, and Andrea, who had followed her upward, began pressing his lips frantically to her white throat and the hollow of her collarbone.

Wherever his lips touched, a strange shiver bloomed and spread in concentric rings through her whole body.

This inexplicable heat made her feel like her entire body was floating.

Breathing in shallow, rapid gasps, Riley blinked her damp lashes and whimpered without meaning to.

“A little more…… Your Highness, deeper, please……”

Her hands tightened around the firm shoulders above her.

She wanted more.

Deeper…… the unconscious wish for Andrea to sink into her completely was making her bold.

She felt like she would not survive unless she released all of this strange sensation building inside her.

It felt like it might be dangerous, but she wanted more.

I want to go a little higher…… I want to be a little closer. I want to shatter completely……

Lost in Andrea’s overwhelming caress, Riley was drifting somewhere beyond herself when he went still for a moment. His jaw clenched, the muscles there visibly tightening, as though something was costing him enormously.

But he seemed to reach some kind of decision, and tucked himself back into his trousers, pulling away from where he had been pressed against the wedding dress skirt.

His hand, however, did not stop.

His expression looked pained, almost grim, and what he had pushed back inside his trousers was lifting the fabric in an aggrieved, suffering way.

He pressed it down and tried to calm it, continuing only with his hand.

It was not as though he was doing anything strenuous, and yet sweat was breaking out at the back of Andrea’s neck, while soft, plaintive sounds kept spilling from Riley.

“Hhng.”

Riley’s hand caught Andrea’s arm.

Whether she was trying to stop him or pulling him deeper, there was no force behind the grip. The fabric beneath her was already soaked through.

Andrea pressed his forehead to her round shoulder and panted.

“Hah…… this is going to end badly.”

But just then, Riley’s back arched taut as a bowstring.

Something had been building and building along her spine, and at last something unknown burst open inside her.

Her vision went white. It was like a bolt of lightning. A wave of pure white crashed over her and swept her mind completely clean.

Her sight flickered out, and her whole body, which had been lifted to some impossible height, began to fall endlessly back down.

Riley let out a small, breathless cry and clung to Andrea’s neck on instinct.

He caught her arching waist and held her, and realized she had reached her peak. Her slender limbs were trembling against him.

Seeing the wetness at the corners of her tightly shut eyes, the tears of exhaustion and release, Andrea was in agony.

He wanted to press into Riley right then and there. He wanted to satisfy the animal need inside himself too.

But he forced himself to calm down with everything he had. He found some small comfort in the fact that at least Riley had reached her peak in his arms.

He leaned close to her ear as she burrowed into his chest and whispered darkly.

“I’m a gentleman, so this is as far as we go. After marriage, I promise it’ll be even better.”

His voice was raw and cracked with strain, but to Riley it sounded like a devil’s sweet murmur.

˗ˋˏ ♡ ˎˊ˗

Parnelli trembled slightly as he looked around the interior he had been forcibly escorted into.

‘You will need to come with us.’

The strangers who had appeared out of nowhere with their veiled threats had left him no choice but to board the carriage the previous night.

He had not expected to be dragged this far without a single stop.

He looked around the lavish but eerily silent drawing room and waited for the owner to appear, shaking.

What on earth is happening?

Had he been dragged into some trouble connected to his wife the Count of Radonel’s business affairs? There had already been rumblings about a promissory note issue……

While he sat there anxious, someone stepped into the drawing room.

He recognized the face and went rigid with shock.

Fa, Fabienne? Queen Fabienne?

Or was it former queen now?

Parnelli had been working hard to break into noble society and had memorized the faces of every high-ranking noble and member of the royal family.

But had Fabienne not been confined to some villa in the countryside? Did that mean he had been dragged all the way to that villa?

For someone dethroned and confined, Fabienne was dressed in a magnificent gown, but she gave off an unsettling air. The woman once said to have been the greatest beauty of her time now radiated something cold and vicious.

He had heard that the Blanc Ducal House, Fabienne’s family by birth, had lost their title and lands entirely but had fought tooth and nail to keep their vast private fortune. Word had quietly spread that they had not yet lost their covert influence.

There was talk that Fabienne was biding her time with gritted teeth, vowing to restore everything the Blanc family had lost the day Prince Henry seized the crown prince’s seat.