Should she endure it until she got what she came for? But being dragged around like this wasn’t her style.

Her fiery temper simmered, but she was too flustered to act out, afraid she’d get thrown out if she did.

Aslan sucked on her lower lip like a pacifier, tormented the roof of her mouth, tangled his tongue with hers like a twisted vine, and pressed his lips so tight against hers she could barely breathe.

It was like he was testing out everything he ever heard about kissing.

“Haa, I can’t breathe. That’s enough kissing.”

Freya pulled her head away, gasping. Her arms slid down and Aslan raised an eyebrow.

“Is going further possible?”

“What kind of question is that? What do you mean, further?”

“If you don’t mind, take it off.”

“……And if I say no?”

“Then you may see yourself out.”

He acted like he had nothing to lose.

Maybe that was why. Even though she came intending to seduce Aslan, she felt like she was the one at a disadvantage.

‘I was supposed to be the one eating up an innocent, guileless man.’

She came to introduce him to pleasure and have a little fun. But this situation was somehow……

“Your tone has gotten stiff. You seem like a different person.”

“If you prefer I speak more gently, I can do that.”

“Your expression is scary too……”

“Is this better?”

Aslan smiled warmly. She was so sure she had him wrapped around her finger, but it felt like she was the one performing tricks in the palm of his hand.

‘Don’t tell me I’ve been played?’

Was the Ingrone hostage hiding his true self and putting on an act?

Freya hesitated, and Aslan helped her to her feet.

“It would be best if you headed home for tonight.”

She couldn’t leave like this. She’d have no face to show the maidservants.

They’d ask what happened the moment she got home, and if she said she got thrown out without even getting undressed, how much would they laugh at her? Her pride wouldn’t allow it.

On top of that, she felt like if she missed this chance, she’d lose him for good.

“N, no. I’ll take it off. That’s all I have to do, isn’t it?”

Freya yanked her bodice down. Her heart was too anxious to spare any thought for dignity.

Her white, rounded br*asts came into view before him. They were just the right size to fit in one of Aslan’s large palms.

He still showed almost no reaction. He simply looked over her body with a composed expression.

The strange thing, if she had to name one, was that he didn’t blink once for a long while.

His relentless gaze made the embarrassment hit her belatedly.

This made her no different from the maidservants who sneaked into Aslan’s bedroom. Freya grabbed the dress slipping down past her waist and covered her chest with one arm.

Only once her chest was covered did Aslan’s eyelid muscles seem to relax, and he blinked.

“I didn’t mean for you to undress so suddenly.”

“……I thought I was being thrown out.”

“I meant we could take it slowly. We kissed today, after all.”

There would have been another chance. The tension drained from Freya’s shoulders.

Relief and embarrassment hit at the same time. She puffed out her cheeks and glared at Aslan for confusing her.

“So you’re saying you don’t dislike me?”

Aslan rolled his tongue inside his mouth. He looked down at her with a curious glint in his eye, like he discovered an interesting creature.

What a strange woman. She goes from groveling with her tail between her legs to bouncing back in no time. Her attitude was like a ball he couldn’t predict.

‘Does she have no pride, or does she simply love herself too much……’

Aslan reached out toward her. When his palm wrapped around her rounded shoulder, a peculiar sensation spread from somewhere near his chest.

Freya hunched her shoulders like a rabbit caught by the scruff of the neck by a predator.

“Your palm……”

“Does it bother you?”

“It’s hot and damp.”

“I must be nervous.”

“You’re nervous? Your expression says otherwise.”

“This is my first time doing something like this.”

Saliva pooled under Aslan’s tongue. He wanted to taste those swollen lips again.

Why did the act of sucking and biting another person’s lips feel so extraordinary?

What he thought was only possible in fiction turned out to be real. His first kiss was better than he imagined, and his heart pounded like an explorer who discovered a new continent.

Freya’s eyes lit up at his words.

‘Wait. It was his first time? Of course it was!’

She assumed he was experienced because of how composed he acted. Confirming that he was a v*rgin, Freya felt her confidence surge back.

‘If he’s never done this before, why was he ordering me around telling me to do this and that?’

Greedy v*rgin bastard. He’d pay dearly for that presumption.

Convinced she could take back the upper hand, Freya straightened her hunched back.

She looked Aslan square in the face and gave a tilt of her chin. The smugness was plain to see.

“You asked me to undress and it was your first time?”

“……”

“A prince who’s still a v*rgin. So the rumor that Ingrone people all keep premarital chastity is true?”

Aslan furrowed his brow and let out a short laugh. Not even a princess of a kingdom could act that brazen while half-undressed.

The strange thing was that she didn’t look unpleasant to him.

She was from Vaigon, people he dismissed as savages. She was rude and did whatever she pleased. She was a madwoman who kept barging into a strange man’s room uninvited.

She was someone he couldn’t have imagined in Ingrone, and that made her interesting.

Interesting enough that he felt the urge to squish her cute little nose flat.

‘I was never devout to begin with.’

He didn’t keep his distance from women out of conviction. It wasn’t so much that he tried to preserve premarital chastity as it was that he simply didn’t want to cause a scene.

He just let life flow as it would.

He couldn’t stand out, and he couldn’t cause problems. That was the position Aslan was in.

It was because the first queen died of illness and he was the son of the new concubine brought in afterward.

His father loved the first queen dearly and treated her son, the crown prince, as his only child.

The more Aslan’s talents shone, the more the king and crown prince kept him in check.

It was as though they believed Aslan must not outshine the crown prince. Careless, cruel contempt and scheming followed him throughout his entire upbringing, trampling him down like a weed.

When the queen consort’s power grew and a faction of nobles began to take notice of his talents and gather around him.

The king sent him off as a hostage to a barbarian nation without a moment’s hesitation, making it clear he didn’t consider Aslan his son.

If Aslan died in Vaigon, the king would certainly not shed a single tear.

A mother driven to anxiety by the king’s coldness, an elder brother who hated and watched him with suspicion, nobles too busy currying favor with the king.

Perhaps it was because he didn’t have to watch his every step around any of them here. Vaigon felt more like home to Aslan than his actual home.

‘What happens here won’t reach Ingrone.’

He was also growing tired of pretending to be timid.

“Well. That’s right.”

“It’s really strange. Why do you have to stay chaste until you’re married?”

“I’m not entirely sure myself. The scriptures say to, so I suppose that’s why.”

Freya smiled and pressed herself closer. The soft, warm touch of her skin made Aslan’s neck go stiff.

“You kept your chastity without even knowing the reason why?”

“……Yes.”

“Wasn’t it hard?”

“Not particularly.”

“Do you still want to keep it?”

Freya took his hand and placed it on her chest. Aslan’s throat bobbed. His blue eyes darkened like the depths of a deep sea.

“……I’m not sure.”

“You don’t need to hold onto some ridiculous belief here in Vaigon.”

Her whisper was like a devil’s temptation. Aslan’s lips curved.

Was the devil her, or himself?

Was it him, the one who suppressed his desires by indulging in *rotic literature?

Or was it her, the one who lived freely and without restraint?

Who was worse would be something to find out in time. Aslan gripped the soft flesh in his hand, and the delicate br*ast yielded like a ripe, soft peach.

It was softer than he imagined. A sensation impossible to find on a man’s hard body.

“I’m wavering. Very much so.”

His voice, stripped of any lightness, was heavy.

Like a sticky, viscous liquid that, once it clung to something, refused to let go.

Was it Aslan’s low voice? Was it the large palm cupping her entire cheek?

For a moment, Freya’s ears went muffled.

***

Her face flushed red as a cherry, Freya pouted. The shameful position made her toes curl.

“Why do you have so many demands? You’re the most tiresome man I’ve ever met.”

“It’s my first time, so I simply want to make it special.”

“This is your idea of special?”

Freya rolled her eyes and looked back at him. This wasn’t special, it was perverted!

Having thoroughly kneaded her br*asts, Aslan was now wholly occupied with exploring the curve of her waist and the swell of her hips.

He was so relentless that the arm propped against the bed trembled finely.

“It’s my first time seeing a woman’s body up close……”

Was every first-timer this curious?

She was flustered, but she was trying her best to seem more experienced than Aslan. Showing shyness felt like losing to him. So she ended up going along with his strange requests as though they were nothing.

“Could you bend your waist a little more? Your back arches like a cat’s.”

“Wh, why are you spreading my backside?”

“The way the cleft parts looks like flower petals. There’s another opening below the anus. It looked a bit unsightly in books, but it’s cuter than I expected.”

Freya sucked in a sharp breath.

‘He must be out of his mind.’

To think she was being examined in a place she never paid attention to herself.

The thought of Aslan scrutinizing her most private parts so thoroughly was more than she could bear. Freya toppled forward and turned over, pulling her legs together and folding them shut.

“Why are you looking there?!”

“I need to know exactly where the v*gina is. Someone like me who’s never done this might not be able to tell the v*gina from the anus. It wouldn’t do to put it in the wrong place, would it?”

“Ugh.”

She had to admit he had a point, but she didn’t want to.

That didn’t make the embarrassment go away any faster. Freya grabbed Aslan by the shoulder and pulled.