Every time her tongue traced that intimate skin, a tingling ran all the way down her back. The sharp pains that had felt like her entire body was breaking apart and shattering were visibly easing.

“Haa.”

It was dizzying in the most wretched way, like frozen skin coming into warmth and melting. Too sweet. In her excitement she could not contain her strength.

“Ngh!”

Even knowing the human man she had caught was going rigid, she bit at his lips almost savagely. The soft flesh split like ripe fruit pulp and the smell of blood spread thick and rich. She lapped and swallowed the seeping blood in gulps, and it wet her throat sweetly like well-ripened fruit wine. It was delicious. Truly, delicious.

“Get. Off!”

She was shoved away because the spreading sweetness of pleasure had drained the strength from her hands.

“Are you insane, are you actually insane!”

“Haha, ha.”

His face had flushed a vivid red. Did that mean it had not been entirely unpleasant for him. Or had his eyes rolled back in fury and left him looking like that.

What was certain was that Lionel was indeed the subject of the first Oracle. That man had to hold her.

“Lionel.”

She watched the handsome face scrubbing at his lips and muttering curses at the split wound, then licked her own reddened lips in turn. She made a small deliberate sound, and she could see the man’s face take on the look of someone about to truly lose his mind.

“It’s you.”

Laughter surged up from deep in her belly.

I’m glad it’s you.

Because you’re quite an appetizing person.

Because it doesn’t seem like it will be so unpleasant.

“Regrettably, you cannot kill me. If you were a man who could, you would not have saved me in the first place. All the more so because of your sister, because it is a life she saved.”

Whether she had struck a nerve, the man who had been covering his mouth clenched his fist tight. But just as he knew her well, Iberis also knew the true nature of the stubborn man before her.

“But if I permit it, you can take my life.”

“What are you saying?”

She looked straight into those slightly wavering eyes and smiled as bewitchingly as she could. Swallowing a self-mocking smile at the thought of whether this face still worked on that man.

“How about we make a deal?”

“What kind?”

Watching the man’s face grow colder and colder, Iberis hoped this provocation would land. She hoped he would come charging in without knowing what lay spread before him was a trap.

“Think about it. If I die in a runaway state like this, the North you love will also become ice cold.”

She staked everything on the fact that the man before her was a great noble who loved his land.

“So let us make a contract.”

On the fact that he was someone who would not let go of any chance to crush the opponent he so despised.

“Hold me. Break the curse. And I will give you this life.”

On the possibility that he might be a person of broad enough capacity to think of a greater future.

“Lionel?”

The man she had expected to come charging in making a scene pressed his lips together and stared at her with a piercing gaze. The Grand Duke looked like a man sunk deep in thought. And when a not inconsiderable amount of time had passed, he spoke.

“You’re telling me to believe that such an Oracle came down, saying I have to hold you?”

Laughter rose at that skeptical voice, but she knew that if she laughed here, that suspicious man would walk out for good.

“If you want proof, I can provide it. Go to my teacher at the temple, the cardinal. You will be able to hear a proper answer again.”

At that moment, the Grand Duke said something she had not anticipated.

“You.”

“Hm?”

“…… Do you think I can hold you? No. Can you stand to be held by me?”

Iberis was briefly at a loss for words. Out of sheer disbelief and absurdity. What kind of childish talk was this? If it meant breaking the curse, she would do it even if told to be held by a beast!

‘Even if it weren’t you.’

Iberis smiled cruelly and trampled the man’s expectation underfoot.

Remembering the man’s tongue, which had for just a brief moment responded and tangled with hers when she had pressed her tongue into his mouth.

“If you’re curious, shall we try it now. Whether it’s possible or not.”

“What?”

Watching his eyes waver greatly, Iberis closed the distance that had opened between them.

“I said to test whether you can be aroused. Do you not understand what I mean, Grand Duke? Or.”

Those silver eyes curved softly, beautiful and yet.

“Do you lack the courage again this time?”

That provoking smirk was quite cruel.

* * *

He must have lost his reason looking at that small and lovely face right before his nose, seeming to disregard him. Or he had been so furious he had gone out of his mind.

“Mm, hng.”

It began with a kiss that felt like being swallowed whole. Just as the woman had done before, Lionel too took those vividly reddened lips in one bite.

D*mn it all, they were soft and fragrant. He didn’t want to admit it, but the excitement creeping up on him was dreadfully good.

“Ha, ng.”

He pressed into the small lips that parted with a small laugh in what seemed like a response, and ravaged the inside freely. He probed and dug into the soft mucous membrane, caught her tongue and sucked it greedily.

She was someone he despised terribly. Someone he hated enough to want to wring her neck even in his dreams.

And yet why? Why were these lips so sweet and intoxicating that they shook his very soul?

“Ha, Lio, nel.”

Before he knew it, Lionel had forgotten that he had started this to humiliate her, and was lost in the contact. The rough movement of his tongue, like digging into a wound, slowed.

He caught the tongue trying to escape and swallowed and sucked at it again. He was terribly absorbed.

‘Iberis.’

He gripped the soft nape of the neck of the one who was naturally letting out m*ans, and took hold of the rounded shoulders with his hand. They were smooth. The soft skin that seemed to melt under his touch felt exactly like it was melting.

‘Iberis!’

D*mn it. When he tangled his tongue deep, the woman’s m*an that rang out was vivid. A bristling sensation came like a thunderbolt. At the feeling of being about to lose his reason, a tingling spread through him.

Desire spread thrillingly outward. He wanted to touch more of that smooth skin. Strength entered his fingertips and they pressed into the woman’s thin clothing.

He gripped her slender waist tight. Just a little, just a little more. He moved downward and seized the soft rounded curve of her backside in a firm grip, and then.

‘D*mn it.’

The moment a sensation no man could fail to recognize came dangerously close.

“Ugh.”

With a sharp sound she pushed him away. Pulled apart in a daze, he could see how slick and thoroughly he had been licking, a transparent thread connecting the two of them before it snapped.

“Haa, hk.”

“……”

He heard ragged breathing. It was his own. The sense of reality crashed over him like cold water. The man who had just been lapping and sucking like a beast went blank.

‘I, I was just.’

Biting and sucking that woman?

That damned enemy of his?

The moment he realized it, he wanted to run if he could. D*mn it, she had said Oracle, and something strange had clearly happened. In his right mind he could not have done this. Flustered, he looked up, and the woman who had been quietly meeting his eyes spoke.

“Unexpected, Grand Duke.”

Ah, d*mn it.

“You!”

He reached out hastily toward Iberis’s languidly smiling lips.

“Truly unexpected. Your tongue work is quite something. And on top of that……”

The moment those silver eyes moved downward toward his lower body, he knew what kind of infuriating nonsense she was about to say. He had to shut that mouth. But the emperor was faster than his hand.

“I didn’t know you were the type to get aroused by humiliating someone you hate, Lionel. Don’t tell me you’re hard. Should I touch it for you?”

“D, don’t make me laugh, I wasn’t aroused!”

He had only felt that way, it hadn’t actually happened.

“Ahaha! What a petty answer!”

“Shut up!”

And besides, how could a person who called herself emperor say such filthy things so casually. He shouted at her to shut up in fury, then stared blankly at the woman cackling with laughter.

She could laugh like that too?

‘Ha.’

Somehow all of this felt like a dream. Yes, didn’t it? There was no way it could be reality that the damned emperor who had been pretending not to notice him all this time had suddenly summoned him and told him to hold her because she needed to break a curse.