A Butterfly Through the Mist - Chapter 124

Ilex’s eyes traced the past when she was not there.

Three years ago, when he had turned away after letting Tilia go, as if cutting off his own arm. Desperate for any scrap of news about her, the man had once deliberately sought out a place where Judy Wells might be.

Attending a social gathering full of unpleasant gazes and cloying scents, Ilex spotted Tilia’s friend sitting in a corner, sipping juice, and approached her. Then, wearing an indifferent mask, he probed whether she knew anything about the vanished Tilia Ambrose.

The woman, seemingly caught off guard by his approach, briefly wore a flustered expression before soon shaking her head with a gloomy look.

Saying she didn’t know either, saying she desperately wanted to know too—her face didn’t seem like it was lying.

And yet, upon hearing it, the mix of disappointment and satisfaction that he felt in his heart was utterly vile.

The fact that even Judy Wells, who seemed inseparably close to Tilia, hadn’t heard from her was deeply unpleasant.

But learning that Tilia hadn’t just refused him—that she wanted to cut off all contact with everyone in Arkansis—brought a base, ugly sense of relief.

Right, Tilia had simply come to hate everything about Arkansis. It wasn’t that she hated him in particular.

It wasn’t that he was especially loathsome.

She had just grown sick and tired of everything in Arkansis.

That thought was what allowed Ilex to endure standing in front of the empty mailbox.

So, naturally, he had thought she would be just as indifferent toward Judy Bartlett when they met again.

“…Is it bothering you that much?”

Yet Tilia wore a face filled with helpless worry over her old friend.

Had the profile he’d seen immersed in deep thought until now actually been because of Judy Bartlett?

At the faint, creeping discomfort, Ilex gently rubbed her pale belly with a bit more strength.

“About earlier. Judy…”

But Tilia, not even noticing the silent protest telling her to stop talking about that woman and look at him instead, brought up the same topic again.

“Didn’t she seem really angry at me?”

“Of course, she’d be angry.”

“Why?”

“Because you left without a word.”

Now, Ilex’s hand had moved from her belly to stroking the soft flesh just below her chest. His tone was a little indifferent, but the sharpness of the feelings he failed to hide leaked out as he spoke.

“A friend who lived thinking you were half-dead because you sent not even a single letter suddenly sees you show up perfectly fine—of course it would feel like betrayal.”

“But it wasn’t on purpose—!”

Hearing Ilex’s voice, which unintentionally came out in a sneering tone, Tilia quickly turned her head and tried to protest.

“It wasn’t?”

But she couldn’t finish her sentence; she only bit her lip hard and stared straight ahead again.

“If it wasn’t, then what was it, Tilia?”

“…Do you think she waited long? Enough that she’s still that angry?”

“Probably. But more importantly—if it wasn’t on purpose, what was it?”

Even with his continued pressing, she didn’t answer.

Ilex, trying to cool his irritation, halted the hand that had been idly stroking her soft skin and looked down at her.

The expression on her face made it clear: she wasn’t thinking about him at all.

Ha. Realizing it yet again, the corner of Ilex’s mouth twisted upward, as if someone had forcibly pulled it into a crooked smile.

He was indifferent toward everyone else—but when it came to Tilia Ambrose, Ilex was hypersensitive. Thus, he couldn’t help but sharply notice the meaning in her silence—the words she swallowed without telling him.

She had written a letter.

She had written one, but for some reason, it had never been delivered.

Unlike with him, she had written a letter to Judy Bartlett with her own hand…

The delusion he had clung to shattered to pieces, and his fingers, resting on her body, started to tighten again.

Ilex, his tongue rolling against the inside of his cheek, stared at Tilia’s face, lost deep in thought.

Three years. The time he had no choice but to spend away from her had sunk a deep mire of anxiety into his heart.

Tilia thought that he harbored this unease because he doubted her past.

But no—that wasn’t the truth.

For as soon as he had secured a moment to breathe, safe from his father’s eyes, the first thing he had done was send an informant to Ontaroa to report back on Tilia.

Through meticulously detailed reports, Ilex had already confirmed long ago:

that she had not strayed,

that she had remained indifferent toward everyone else all that time.

Thus, the reason he obsessed over the three years they had spent apart was not because of suspicion.

The real reason he was so consumed with jealousy over a single letter Tilia had written to her friend.

The honest reason why such sharp irritation rose within him.

Because he couldn’t be sure whether during those three years, there had ever been a single day when she thought of him with the same intensity as he thought of her.

In truth, it had always bothered him. Tilia had never once told him she liked him.

No matter how many times he whispered words of love until his ears ached, the responses he received were always lukewarm at best. Never enough to be sure.

It wasn’t that he doubted her heart itself. If she hadn’t liked him, Tilia would never have offered her body to him so intimately.

If he could go back to three years ago—or even just one year ago—the past version of himself would have been overjoyed even with their current relationship. He would have shouted that he had nothing more to wish for.

But humans were thankless creatures: once you let them sit, they begged to lie down too.

Having gained a place by Tilia’s side, he now craved her warmth. Having won her affection, he now wanted something greater.

That craving steeped Ilex in impatience and anxiety. It dared to make him greedy. It made him, while begging for love, feel jealousy as though someone had stolen the affection that could have been his.

“Seems you did write a letter to Lady Bartlett, huh.”

But at the same time, Ilex knew.

He knew that even this sulking was something permitted within the boundaries Tilia allowed.

If she were truly displeased and showed any sign of taking back all that she had given him, he would immediately, without hesitation, curl up his tail and expose his belly, as if he had never growled.

“Unlike with me, you actually wrote a letter yourself, huh.”

And so, even though he knew he should hold back, the twisted feelings in his heart refused to subside.

Ilex began to knead her breast with a grip harsher than usual, unlike the gentle touch he typically used.

“Mmnh.”

Startled by the sudden assault, Tilia let out a nasal moan. Realizing there was a faint trace of pleasure in that sound, Ilex, without hesitation, scratched at her plump peak with his nails.

“Ah, haah, w-wait…”

Tilia, who had quickly shed her pensive expression, flinched her shoulders and tried to turn around. But the man buried his face in the nape of her neck to prevent her from seeing his face.

He didn’t want her to see this expression. He didn’t want her to see the childish face twisted with jealousy and pettiness. Instead, Ilex feigned arousal and freely roamed over her body.

“Haa, mmh, ah…”

Before she realized it, Tilia’s body, now well-accustomed to his ways, was already making wet sounds.

Seeing Tilia’s eyes begin to glaze over with pleasure, Ilex spread her legs wider with less patience than usual.

“W-wait, aah, s-so fast…! Ahhk!”

Of course, it only seemed “a bit fast” to him, to the one who had to accept his large cock, it didn’t feel like just “a bit.”

Phew. But the well-trained hole accepted him, even while stretched to its limits, clenching and sucking him deeper. Its slick walls guided him inward, like the entrance to heaven itself.

It felt as if a thousand hot tongues were wrapping around his cock.

Still hugging her from behind, Ilex pressed Tilia’s back down flat and inserted himself immediately. Turning his hips slowly, as if to stretch her from within.

Ah, mmh. He could feel the white back under his chest convulsing with each shudder, and a satisfied smile crept across his lips without him realizing.

“Tilia.”

At the sound of her name, her inner walls squeezed him in response.

Exhaling another hot breath, he slickly sucked on the reddened shell of her ear and whispered, “Tomorrow, I’m going to sleep in the office.”

W-wait. Realizing the meaning of that near-declaration of war, Tilia’s body twitched in protest.

But it was useless—already trapped like a rat in a cage, caught in his arms. Ilex wrapped her thin waist tightly with both arms and began thrusting his hips sharply.

“Ah, haah, s-stop, ahk, hik…!”

Ignoring any notion of pacing himself, he pounded ruthlessly at the places she felt it the most. Tilia, unable to endure the too-quick climax that overtook her, thrashed and cried out.

Pressing down hard on the woman’s trembling belly, Ilex cruelly laughed.

“Hh, hhk. Ah, aaaah…!”

The night rang with cries devoured by pleasure that resembled pain.

Swallowed whole by the burning jealousy that scorched his insides, Ilex that night broke fourteen out of the fifteen rules he had promised to Tilia.