Lysiana’s body gave a small shudder in Thear’s arms and went limp.

He had tried to be careful, but it seemed taking him in had still been too much for her.

He patted her gently until she fell asleep, her eyes blinking slowly, then carefully wiped down her body with a warm, damp cloth.

He could see her white skin mottled with his bite marks.

The sight was far too indecent, and his instincts threatened to stir again, but fortunately this time his reason and conscience functioned properly.

“Mmn.”

Though there were a few close calls.

He soothed his reluctance by pressing his lips to his wife’s with a soft sound, then finished wiping between Lysiana’s legs.

Wiping away the sticky, slick wetness that coated her thighs felt like a terrible waste.

If only Lysiana would not refuse, he wanted to lick up every last trace of her.

‘Shameless b*stard.’

Faced with his own desire, Thear cursed himself.

He finished wiping Lysiana down with hurried hands and quickly pulled the blanket over her.

He moved to leave, but the eyelids of Lysiana, whom he had thought asleep, opened just slightly. Ever so slightly.

“Where are you going…?”

“Go to sleep.”

Thear stroked her hair, and Lysiana murmured in a drowsy haze.

“…You said you’d stay with me….”

It sounded exactly like she was asking him not to go, and he felt torn.

“Would you like me to stay?”

“Mmn.”

Lysiana answered vaguely, half asleep.

In the end, Thear decided once again to be an utter b*stard. The kind of b*stard who exploited the vulnerability of a wife unsettled by her lost memories to satisfy his own desires.

“All right. I’ll stay by your side until you wake up.”

Thear took her answer however he pleased and slipped quietly into the spot beside his wife.

When Lysiana, drawn to his still-warm body heat, burrowed into his arms like a small kitten, he even found himself smiling.

She seemed to want to stay close to him in any way she could, and he found it endearing.

“Lysiana. Are you asleep?”

Thear asked, but his wife gave no answer.

The steady sound of her breathing tickling his chest made it plain she was sleeping, yet he asked anyway, for a reason of his own.

“If you’re asleep, I’ll do as I please.”

The quiet warning drew no response.

‘I warned you.’

Thear shamelessly pressed his advantage and let his hands roam freely over Lysiana’s bare body.

He touched the small ears he had always wanted to feel, wound her soft hair around his fingers and played with it.

He squeezed her plump backside without waking her, counted the knobs of her spine, and pressed his lips to each small knuckle of her little hand.

After drinking his fill of all of Lysiana’s loveliness, a hollow feeling arrived right on cue.

It was a resentment born from the reality that they were pressed this close, skin to skin, and yet not truly touching at all.

The day of their wedding. The night they had shared a room for the first time.

Thear had held Lysiana more gently than he had tonight.

He had not dared press his lips to her for fear of leaving marks that might hurt her, and he had not let his hands grip too hard for fear she might break.

‘You may bite me instead.’

‘Ugh…. Mm, huu….’

‘I’ll stop if it hurts too much.’

‘It’s fine. It’s fine, so just….’

Just finish quickly. That was surely what she had left unsaid.

Lysiana had squeezed her eyes shut and endured him, like someone gritting through the pain of a wound being cauterized.

She had acted like a puppet on strings. And so Thear had not pushed further.

Because there was nothing more wretched than pouring out desire on someone who did not want it.

Thear had wanted Lysiana to treat him the way she had when they first met, and he believed that would take time.

Even the most terrible grief cannot outlast time, in the end. He had thought that anger and resentment would weather away too.

And then something like this happened, out of nowhere.

‘Is this honey, or poison?’

When her memories returned and she realized he had cowardly slipped through her defenses, how would Lysiana react?

He was afraid.

It would be a relief if his actions softened even a little of her old anger, but she might just as easily reproach him for his cunning.

‘Don’t think about it.’

Protecting her comes first right now.

He pressed his lips gently to his sleeping wife’s forehead.

* * *

She reached out beside her in her sleep, but found no warmth.

“…?”

When Lysiana opened her eyes and turned her head, Thear was sitting on the sofa in the early morning light, looking at something.

Lysiana quietly watched the lines of her husband’s face, drawn in white by the sunlight.

It was a face she had been seeing every day for a week now, and yet it looked new every time.

‘I must have fallen for that face of his.’

Lysiana giggled to herself without realizing it and buried her face in the pillow. At that, Thear sensed her stirring and glanced up.

She quickly shut her eyes and pretended to be asleep.

“Are you awake?”

“….”

“Would you like to be lazy a little longer?”

Lysiana perked up her ears. She could feel her husband approaching.

A moment later, one side of the bed dipped, and a solid presence drew close. A warm hand came with it.

“My lady.”

“….”

“Lysiana.”

His hand gently wound through her hair. He tucked a few strands behind her ear and stroked her head with care.

“Lysiana?”

His voice came from just beside her.

She held back the urge to flinch and kept pretending to sleep.

“Hmm.”

Thear let out a quiet sigh and seemed to move again, and then a ticklish sound came from right at her ear.

“Are you asleep?”

Thear had kissed her ear. Lysiana could not hold back the light shiver that ran through her and let out a small shriek.

“That tickles!”

“Well, that’s what you get for pretending to sleep.”

Lysiana burst into laughter, and Thear followed with a small laugh of his own. The sly hand creeping around her ankle was a bonus.

“That’s indecent.”

Lysiana glared at her husband from behind an armful of blanket, though not with any real reproach.

“Me?”

Whether she minded or not. Thear asked back shamelessly, grabbed her ankle, and planted a firm kiss on her bent knee.

At this rate, it was obvious they would end up going at it again first thing in the morning.

“We said we were going out today.”

Lysiana, sensing danger, quickly dove under the blanket.

“Yes, we did. But you seemed like you didn’t want to go.”

Thear scooped her up, blanket and all, sat her on his thigh, and scattered small kisses across her face.

It made her cringe with embarrassment.

Lysiana squirmed in his arms, receiving her husband’s kisses that were so full of affection.

“That’s not true.”

She stole a glance up at his face.

He held her close and could not seem to wipe the smile from his lips.

Looking into those eyes so full of warmth, she felt a fullness rising to fill the empty space where her memories had been.

“Thear.”

Lysiana gently drew his cheek toward her and kissed him. Thear responded naturally in kind.

He parted her slightly open lips further, slipped past her teeth, and softly drew her tongue up against his.

When Lysiana grew breathless and began to pant, he pulled back just slightly, rubbed his lips against hers, wet with saliva, and let his hands stroke down her waist or pat her backside.

“Huu, mm….”

“Mmm.”

Lysiana let out a soft moan, and almost at the same moment Thear rumbled low in his throat.

The two of them savored each other’s lips for a long while, like people licking at morning dew in a desert, before finally pulling apart.

They sat across from each other at a small table and ate together. Her husband, who had fussed over her and kept offering her this and that, even helped her carefully choose her outfit once they began preparing to go out.

Thear was, at his core, generous with Lysiana.

Whatever she wanted to eat, whatever she wanted to do, whatever she asked of him. He refused none of it, and scolded her for nothing she said.

“I want to ride a horse too.”

“Can you manage on your own?”

“No. Ride with me.”

“All right.”

“I want to hold the reins.”

“Hold them like this.”

He was generous to a fault.

Lysiana sometimes felt that her husband treated her less like a wife and more like a daughter, yet she accepted his care gladly all the same.

She liked having a tender husband.

Whatever he was doing, the way he responded to her without condition. The gaze that followed her every small movement. Even the tiny smile he showed each time their eyes met. She loved all of it, deeply and completely.

It felt like being a young girl falling in love for the first time.

“Thear.”

“Yes.”

Of course, even while floating blissfully along on that feeling, she sometimes came crashing back down to earth.

“Am I too much of a bother to you?”

She felt uneasy, having no way of knowing how the old her had treated him.

Judging by his behavior, Thear seemed to know her inside and out, while Lysiana knew nothing about him at all.

So she kept asking.

“Do I seem like I find you a bother?”

“That’s not what I mean….”

“Not in the slightest.”

When a firm answer came back she would feel reassured, only to question it again.

‘Really?’

The last sliver of doubt, swallowed back down because she feared Thear would dislike hearing it said aloud, nagged at her from somewhere inside all the while.

“When do we return to the main estate?”

“Once my adjutant finishes settling things, we’ll go back.”

Thear answered in a somewhat subdued voice.

According to him, sending Lysiana to Neils had been for her safety.

It had not yet been three years since Thear became the head of the Havertz Marquisate.

She did not know the exact reason, but apparently there had been a faction that opposed Thear taking the position.

They still opposed him, and among them were those who had taken to rather extreme measures, he explained.

That was also why Thear had sent Lysiana to Neils.

He had worried that they might threaten Lysiana while he was away, and so he had moved her somewhere safe. That was how Thear explained it.

‘And then I had an accident, unexpectedly.’

He said he had sensed something was wrong when her letters stopped coming back with replies.