A Butterfly Through the Mist - Chapter 119

With a movement free of any unnecessary gestures, Ilex escorted Tilia into the carriage and sat down beside her.

Tilia had expected him to sit across from her, in accordance with proper etiquette, and looked at him in surprise.

“Why?”

Ilex shrugged as if wondering what the problem was, then tapped the wall of the carriage.

Before she could even tell him to sit on the other side, the carriage began to move. While she was still caught off guard and letting it slide, Ilex scooted closer to her side.

“I should’ve brought the smallest carriage.”

There was genuine intent mixed into his muttered complaint. Tilia frowned as she felt his hand subtly creeping toward her waist and slapped it away.

Ouch. But only Tilia’s soft palm hurt. Regardless of the slap, Ilex easily lifted her onto his lap and firmly supported her swaying waist.

At his unhesitant behavior, Tilia’s mood genuinely began to sour.

She lowered her gaze and grabbed Ilex’s perfectly defined jaw with one hand, then opened her mouth.

“Just because we slept together, you think you can do whatever you want?”

“Why are you saying that? That’s cold.”

Smack. He lightly kissed the hand holding his jaw and whispered in an infuriatingly sly voice.

“It’s not like we only did it once, right?”

Even just last week, it had been enough to lose count.

At that dirty-old-man remark, Tilia gave him a cold smile.

‘This won’t do.’

Now that she had truly decided to keep him by her side, it was time to establish the hierarchy clearly.

He needed a bit more punishment.

Completely unaware of Tilia’s firm resolution, Ilex let her lean against his chest and asked, “How was it? Your new job.”

Still thinking up ways to torture him, Tilia responded a beat later.

“It was good.”

“Then why the gloomy face?”

It wasn’t until he said that that Tilia realized the reason he had closed their distance so thoughtlessly was to ease her tension, and that he was trying to hear the real reason she had hesitated at the steps just moments earlier.

“Did someone bother you? Tell me.”

The gentle hand massaging the back of her neck softened not just her muscles, but her heart as well.

“…No. It really was fine.”

Feeling that touch, Tilia closed her eyes for a moment and, leaning a bit more firmly into his chest, allowed herself to be as honest as the muscles she had relaxed.

“It’s just… it felt weird that everyone was being too nice.”

“Why is that weird? It’s normal.”

“It might be normal to you, but it’s not for me.”

To her soft voice, Ilex gave no reply. Thump, thump. As she rested against him, Tilia could feel his steady heartbeat pounding against her, as if to declare that he was alive and present.

“…Still, I should get used to it.”

His voice came just as she was about to drift off.

He gently stroked her back, soothing her as he whispered, “If you keep feeling out of place with normalcy, it’ll just make things harder.”

“……”

“So just be a little awkward at first. Try to adjust.”

There was something resonant in his words. When she slowly lifted her head and met his eyes, she saw gentle gray-blue eyes holding her like warm mist.

“If it really gets too annoying, just ignore it and move on.”

It was such a perfectly ‘him’ kind of advice that Tilia let out a small laugh, then leaned away just slightly from his embrace, where she’d been resting drowsily.

Looking visibly disappointed, Ilex reached for her flat belly and began to idly toy with it.

“Other than that, nothing else happened?”

“Something else?”

“Like, anyone acting suspicious? Or someone strange showing up?”

“Not really. Nothing special happened… It was just normal.”

At her indifferent answer, the large hand that had been holding her slender waist subtly relaxed. Almost as if, having heard what he wanted, he could now let his guard down.

What’s that? A strange feeling passed through Tilia for just a moment as she glanced at his hand.

“When we get back, let’s have dinner in the rose garden this time.”

Ilex murmured, brushing his lips against her neck.

“We should lie down there before all the flowers fall.”

Lie down? Not just to see them?

That curious statement brushed away the vague discomfort she’d felt moments before, and Tilia looked up at his expectant face and suddenly asked, “By the way, are there even roses in the garden?”

Her green eyes sparkled with mischief, waiting to see his reaction.

“Someone plucked all the prettiest ones last week, didn’t they?”

“I replanted them.”

But this man was not someone easily teased.

With a calm reply, he undid a button of her blouse and brought his lips to the newly exposed skin.

“Can’t afford to waste the rose season, after all.”

The man’s hot lips touched the thin string of the necklace. As he gnawed persistently at her collarbone, Tilia flinched slightly, then quickly relaxed her shoulders again.

Fine, go ahead and get all excited.

Watching him bury his face into her blouse, as if intoxicated by the scent wafting from within, Tilia gave a grim smile inwardly.

Because today, I’m not giving you what you want.

***

Clatter—!

Plates flew off the wide table all at once, shattering with a loud crash and scattering fragments across the floor.

“Hnnnh—!”

But neither the man who had caused such mischief, nor the woman now sprawled across the dining table in place of the fallen dessert, paid the slightest attention to the earsplitting noise.

“W-wait, Il, hngh, -lex…”

Tilia, with her pearl-colored blouse completely unbuttoned and her creamy breasts fully exposed, flailed her arms to stop Ilex from flipping up her skirt.

“D-don’t, don’t do this… ngh!”

But her arms, weakened from how thoroughly her chest had been gnawed, were no match.

Riiip. The sound of her stockings tearing echoed, and soon her now-useless underwear dropped to the floor, landing face-down on a whipped cream cake.

This isn’t what I planned. That one phrase echoed over and over in her muddled head.

No. This wasn’t what the plan had been. Not at all.

But there was no time to retrace where it had all gone wrong.

With one of Tilia’s slender thighs now slung over his shoulder, the man’s face dove straight toward her soaked folds.

“Aaah…!”

As his chiseled nose rubbed against the water-drenched slit, parting the glistening folds to reach the fountain spring, Tilia lost all thought, reduced to ragged breaths.

“You smell sweet, Tilia.”

“Don’t—ngh, don’t smell me, s-stop, ah…!”

He inhaled the scent from her hidden depths like a man bewitched by a blooming flower, and Tilia shivered uncontrollably.

But just like her earlier protests, this struggle amounted to nothing. Grabbing her flailing ankle with ease, he brought his tongue to the same place his nose had just been buried.

“Mmnh, ah, aaah…”

Teasing her dripping entrance with light licks, he eventually gave the flushed and trembling lips a firm suck before plunging his tongue deep into her twitching hole.

Hnnngh. As her inner walls began to ripple and welcome the invader, Tilia trembled and had to cover her mouth to stop the loud sound threatening to burst out.

“Don’t hold back.”

Immediately sensing it, Ilex pulled his tongue from inside and ordered, having just been teasing every corner of her inner walls.

“There’s no one around here anyway. Not even an ant will show up for at least three hours, so just let it out.”

Even with his unexpected thoughtfulness—who knew when he’d arranged that—Tilia couldn’t bring herself to remove her hand. She swallowed her voice instead.

Even if it was their private garden, this place was still wide open. Look up, and there was nothing but sky.

It wasn’t that she feared someone might hear—it was a matter of her own internal code.

She had only ever been with one man. She had become accustomed to Ilex Davenport’s way of making love. And she was still being conditioned by it.

“You’re seriously going to keep covering your mouth?”

She didn’t particularly intend to be with someone else, but she still wanted to feel pleasure within what most people would call normal boundaries. She didn’t want to be one of those women who were ridiculed as beasts when caught in the act.

“Though, I’ll admit… it’s kind of hot.”

Then again, since her first time had been with this pervert, maybe it was already too late for that wish.

“Well, if you really want to keep quiet, go ahead and try for as long as you can. I get off on whatever sound comes out of your mouth, anyway.”

With that cheeky grin, he buried his face back into her folds as she trembled, still stubbornly covering her mouth.

“Hhngh, nn, mmn…”

His tongue, having just licked along her entire slit, now zeroed in on the stiff nub peeking out. It stood tall, as if proudly showing just how aroused she already was.

Seeing it, Ilex grinned with approval.

And then, with a sharp contrast to that tender smile, he sank his teeth into the tender clit with a hard bite.