“Then this much should be perfectly fine….!”

“Stop.”

At last, Thear’s reason snapped.

He roughly silenced the lips of his bold, chattering wife in his arms.

His tongue moved on instinct, dragging across her slightly swollen lower lip, and as he pushed past her weak resistance, he pressed into her small mouth.

His body pushed against her smaller one.

With barely half a step forward from Thear, Lysiana’s center of balance gave way easily.

‘It would be best to refrain from strenuous activity for the time being.’

Even with his reason gone, the doctor’s words played back in his mind.

Just before Lysiana fell back onto the bed, Thear caught her with both hands between her waist and shoulder blades.

He carefully laid her down on the bed, and in doing so, naturally ended up on top of her.

Through the gap in her fallen clothing, her white skin and the clean line of her collarbone were visible, rigid with tension.

“Hah.”

He exhaled a hot breath over her and curled his upper body down. As the distance closed, Lysiana’s warmth tickled his skin.

“Lysiana.”

“Eek.”

He called her name directly into the curve of her ear, and her small body trembled.

Thear felt his way with his hands and slipped beneath her skirt.

Each time he grazed the smooth line of her calf, the round of her knee, and the soft skin of her thigh, a flinching response came back to him.

It was maddening. Far too maddening.

“I, it tickles.”

Lysiana’s face had gone completely red as she squirmed in his arms.

Thear took hold of his wife’s hand, which had been clutching his clothing tight.

Then he pressed his lips in turn to the tips of her neatly trimmed nails, each knuckle, and the back of her hand where the bones stood out.

“Lysiana.”

“…Yes…?”

Lysiana asked back in a half-tearful voice.

Thear looked into her eyes, flushed with embarrassment, for a long moment, then gathered his courage and spoke.

“I want to hold you right now.”

“Oh….”

His hand had stopped at the middle of his wife’s soft thigh.

It was a position from which he could withdraw at any moment, or press further into more intimate territory depending on her answer.

“You can refuse if you don’t want this.”

“….”

“Please be honest with me.”

He could stop now if he had to. It was all right to stop.

Thear held onto the thread of his reason with everything he had.

The time spent waiting for his wife’s answer felt endless, like an eternity.

Her lips, painfully still, did little more than flutter faintly, and she could not seem to give him an answer.

‘Right. This must be difficult for her.’

Thear read her hesitation as a refusal and moved to pull back. But at that moment, Lysiana grabbed him by the collar.

“I, I…..!”

“It’s all right. I was wrong not to think of your condition….”

“It’s just that I’ve even forgotten how we used to be with each other….”

“….”

Thear lost his words.

In the clear eyes looking up at him, the unspoken question was plain to see: Is this still all right? Even someone like me?

“…Good lord.”

He bit down hard on his lip and swallowed a low groan.

The answer that came back was several times more endearing than anything he had hoped for.

He felt like he needed to slap himself across the face just to confirm whether this was a dream or reality.

“Lysiana.”

Thear slowly lowered his head toward his wife, who was squirming awkwardly beneath him.

He pressed short kisses in turn to the soft curve of her forehead, her brow bone, her cheek, her earlobe, and the tip of her chin, then slowly brought his lips to hers.

“Put your arms around my neck.”

He said it in a gentle but commanding tone.

Instead of answering, Lysiana nodded and wrapped her arms around Thear’s neck.

Thear took that opening and smoothly pulled Lysiana’s nightgown up and off.

She startled, drew a small breath, and shrank into herself, but that weak resistance only stirred his instincts further.

Her skin, stiff from the slight chill. Her breath, trembling with nerves. And yet the warm, soft arms that held his neck tight like a lifeline.

Lysiana seemed intent on reducing Thear’s reason to dust.

The threadlike hold he had kept on his reason snapped.

“Hah!”

No. Thear let it go himself.

“Lysiana. Lysiana….”

He buried his face in the soft swell of her chest.

When he dragged his tongue across the skin that radiated the warmth of her heartbeat, her slight body shook in small tremors.

“W, wait. Just a moment….”

“No.”

Lysiana, startled by the unfamiliar sensation against her skin, twisted her waist and grabbed Thear’s shoulder.

But Thear firmly caught her by the wrist.

“You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to hold you like this.”

“What…?”

She froze at the words she could not make sense of.

At that moment, Thear pressed further into her.

He brought his lips to her n*pple, stiffened from the cold and the unfamiliar sensation, and with his hand swept continuously from the pleasing curve of her side down to the fullness of her chest, savoring the feel of her.

“Mmn.”

Lysiana let out another moan as his hands traced slowly down each ridge of her spine.

Thear touched that spot again, slower and more deliberately, and kissed her parted, breathless lips.

“Huu….”

Breath slipped out between their joined lips.

Thear scattered small kisses across her, coaxing and soothing her inexperience.

Her moistened lips, her flushed cheeks, the clean line of her jaw, her soft earlobe, and the slender line of her neck beginning just below it.

Each time he pressed his lips and dragged his tongue without leaving a single spot untouched, Lysiana flinched.

Even so, she would not let go of his clothing.

‘She isn’t running away.’

Lysiana was not in distress.

It was different from their wedding night, when she had bitten down on her suffering the way one braces against something dreadful.

‘She’s accepting me.’

Even if it was built on lies and secrets, Lysiana trusted him right now.

As the husband she had loved.

As a man who loved her.

He could tell from her quickened, flushed breathing and her eyes, slowly losing their tension.

The wife he loved without reservation was, at this moment, wholly ready to receive him.

How could he not be glad?

And yet, how sorrowful it was.

“Lysiana.”

Thear covered Lysiana’s hand where it gripped his clothing.

“Yes…?”

Lysiana asked back in a languid voice.

“My name.”

He pressed his forehead into her palm, like a young creature nuzzling for touch.

“Please call my name.”

Lysiana answered him at once.

“…Thear….”

“Once more.”

“Thear.”

Thear.

Lysiana breathed his name like a whisper.

Watching the faint smile at the corner of her lips, Thear was shaken mercilessly between a fierce sense of relief and guilt.

Lysiana knew exactly who was touching her right now.

And at the same time, she knew nothing at all.

“Thear.”

He wanted to cry.

* * *

A firm, slightly rough hand traced the curves of her body again and again.

The calluses built into his hands gave a sense of what kind of life he had lived until now.

The fact that those hands touched her with such care made Lysiana feel something boiling up inside her.

She wanted to cry a little.

She clearly could not remember anything, yet she could tell how much Thear loved her.

And how tenderly he had cherished her.

‘Had he always touched me like this?’

She felt like a liar.

Deceiving him with memories that did not exist, taking advantage of him…. She felt like a villainess who used a person’s heart however it suited her.

She was using Thear’s feelings right now to secure her own comfort. Even allowing this kind of contact.

If that wasn’t a villainess, what was?

Would this guilt too be resolved once her memories returned?

It was suffocating. She wanted to remember how she had treated this man and how much she had trusted him.

“Thear.”

She called his name several times, hoping even a little of that desperate longing would reach him.

Hoping, too, that her memories might return at this moment, like a miracle.

“Lysiana.”

Thear gave her stiffened n*pple a light twist.

“Ah!”

A moan slipped out at the faint stimulation before she could stop it.

The shame of it made her want to flee, but Thear’s large hand held her backside firmly, and she could not.

All that was left was to cling to him and surrender helplessly.

“Mmn….”

“Lysiana. Relax your hand. It’ll go numb later.”

Thear whispered softly and slipped his fingers between hers.

He pressed her hands gently down into the bed, holding them like a restraint, and the man who now held the upper hand looked down at her quietly.

Whether it was her imagination or not, the corners of his eyes looked wet.

Thear, who had been pressing kisses to her neck and collarbone several times, suddenly bared his teeth.

“Ah!”

Her mouth fell open at the sensation of him biting her skin, just enough to feel without hurting.

Thear, seeming to enjoy her reactions, left marks several times from her neck to her shoulder and down to her chest.

Sometimes he licked her skin with his rough tongue like she was something sweet, then suddenly gave a small bite or drew deeply.

It was the movement of someone parched, ready to devour her at any moment.

Or perhaps starved was the more fitting word.

Either way, Thear treated her as though she were precious, and yet he wanted to take her with a desperate hunger.

And at the same time, he made her ache.

His free hand only grazed and rubbed along her skin, and would not do anything more.

“Hah, ah….”

Lysiana squeezed her eyes shut.

A hot, unnameable heat was pooling at one point in her body.

Just below her navel, or somewhere around there. It felt like a small, shameful spring was brimming over.

She wanted Thear’s hand to reach that place quickly, but his touch kept idly teasing her chest, her waist, her backside.

“Thear….”

Lysiana bent her knees and called Thear’s name in a pleading tone.