Chapter 84

Though it wasn’t their first time, Blair was overwhelmed by a sensation more unfamiliar than ever before. She’d never felt so breathless. Edmund pressed into her with such urgency that she had no time to prepare. Releasing the breath he’d been holding down all day, he immediately began driving into the deepest place.

“Haah….”

Blair hurriedly reached out and wrapped her arms around his neck. It wasn’t the best choice. The moment her warmth touched him, it only spurred the frantic thrusting that had been pushing its way in.

The table legs banged and shook, the ugly sound of wood scraping against the floor repeating over and over. Blair groaned, her chin resting on his shoulder, then glanced up. The mirror across from them reflected their disheveled forms. 

Her feet dangled limply beside his tall frame, neatly dressed in a white shirt and black pants. Except for the damp, tangled lower half, they were still fully dressed in mourning attire.

Outside, the procession of mourners continued unabated. Blair even felt a momentary illusion that someone was sobbing bitterly. Though she knew it was an inappropriate time, she was the one who had pulled him close. Yet, Blair suddenly felt a chill in her chest.

Was this comfort, or was it an insult? She couldn’t even tell what kind of feelings she’d accepted him with.

“I, ah… at least, take your clothes off….”

Her voice, shaken by the repeated waves of pleasure, slipped out almost like a sob.

Edmund, breathing out roughly, replied in a low voice, “I need to go back out this evening.”

“Still… ah….”

“Just a little.”

Just a little more like this. The rest of his unfinished words scattered into the air, mixed with ragged breaths. Then he hugged her tightly as if to bind her shaking body and drove into her with relentless persistence. Each time his solid frame slammed against her, their fluids mixed thickly and splashed everywhere, soaking their rubbing bodies and leaving milky stains on their skin. In that moment, Blair realized there was nothing she could say that would stop him.

Each time Edmund’s desperation was conveyed to her, she felt herself sink even deeper. Caught between pity and love for him, and the guilt crashing over her, she could barely breathe. Clutching his shirt, she desperately held on to her collapsing resolve.

“Ha… ah….”

The raindrops tapping against the window grew heavier, long streams of water running down the glass. Everything was unfamiliar. His scent, thickened as it mixed with the damp air from the rain. A man whose face she couldn’t see. Each thrust that crashed into her as if to engrave her, accompanied by his rough breathing, felt unbearably strange.

“Eh, Ed, wait…!”

Even when she dug her nails into the back of his neck, Edmund didn’t stop. He continued to grind her down, driving her past a distant limit. It was the moment his heavy shaft, moving without rest, throbbed deep inside her.

“…Ah…!”

Unbelievably, her climax came quickly. The slickness she’d spilled surged and flowed down. Even though her mind insisted this moment was absolutely wrong, her body, thoroughly trained by him, shuddered down to her toes as if this unusually rough lovemaking were supremely satisfying.

At the same time, someone knocked at the door outside, announcing their presence. It was Butler Albert’s voice.

“Young master.”

Blair, who had been panting while clinging to Edmund’s shoulders, looked up in surprise. The lingering traces of pleasure, thickly smeared across her body, hadn’t yet faded.

“A messenger from the royal palace has come to offer condolences. You need to meet them now.”

The trapped heat scattered in an instant, and the cold of reality rushed in along with reason. Even though servants were not allowed to enter the bedroom without permission, it felt as if their lewd situation inside had been completely exposed, making her heart race wildly. Blair instinctively closed her legs and held her breath.

“I’ll be out soon.”

After taking a moment to steady his breathing, Edmund answered while still buried inside her. When the footsteps beyond the door faded away, he finally pulled out the shaft he’d been pressing deep inside. The fluids that had been forced into the narrow space spilled out in a long stream. The cloudy, foamy mess pooled thickly at one side of the round table before dripping down onto the floor.

Blair stared down at the messy trail with stunned eyes. She gazed at the splattered dark skirt hem, the underwear now scattered on the floor, and her own legs spread wide.

By contrast, Edmund, now far calmer, brushed a light kiss against her cheek and stepped back. His face had shaken off the unease that had rippled beneath the surface, like waves under still water. His gray eyes, from which the frenzy of moments ago had completely vanished, were perfectly composed.

“You don’t need to attend.”

“….”

“Get some rest today.”

The man, who had even straightened his disheveled waistband, returned to his impeccable, upright self. Having brushed away even the unstable side of himself that only she’d glimpsed, he looked flawless once more. A man stitched together by cold order and duty, his exterior looked utterly befitting of a duke. Anyone, even a fool, could tell what position he was meant to rise to.

Picking up the jacket he’d left on the sofa, Edmund walked out of the bedroom with steady steps. What had been a transgression of taboo for her seemed, for him, nothing more than part of a ritual.

Another ritual to endure the funeral, a procedure to rein in his anxiety, a way to control himself as he wavered before his father’s death. Not an outburst of emotion, but an act of sealing it away. So contrary to her hopes, what they had exchanged was neither comfort nor love.

When Blair finally lifted her gaze from the whirl of thoughts, Edmund was already gone from the bedroom. She couldn’t even hear his footsteps fading away. Left alone, Blair looked at herself, thoroughly undone, and sensed that this moment had become irreversible. In the silence, she struggled not to collapse.

***

During the days the funeral continued, mourners gathered endlessly from all over. As Edmund was already being treated as the duke, Blair also had to observe proper etiquette as the lady of the house. Beneath a black veil, with not even a small smile permitted on her face, she greeted countless guests.

And when night came, Edmund invariably held her.

It was an act repeated almost like a duty. To shake off the weight pressing down on him, he gripped that slender body and thrust into it. He drove his grotesquely swollen flesh all the way in, crushing, grinding, and digging into her.

It would have been better if he’d been ruled by desire like at the beginning. At least then, some trace of humanity would have remained within the seething heat.

But after holding her so greedily, Edmund always returned to his restrained self. Blair found that gap hard to understand. He’d kissed her with such desperation and tangled their bodies together, sharing a heat strong enough to swallow them both, yet she couldn’t grasp why she was the only one who ended up breaking apart.

Even so, Blair continued to face Edmund and hold him. Even if that was all it took, she wanted to stay by the side of the man she’d given her heart to. And she wanted to know when she might finally receive that heart back.

“Blair.”

At the voice she heard suddenly, she lifted her head. Edmund had come out of the dressing room and was holding out a tie. It was the one he’d worn since the first day of the funeral, her gift.

Blair accepted the tie with a faint smile and draped it around his neck. Her hands, which had grown fairly accustomed after several days, soon formed a neat knot.

“You’ve been wearing only this tie throughout the funeral.”

“I like it. And I promised I’d wear it on an important day.”

Edmund, smiling back at her, added, “And today happens to be a very important day.”

Blair glanced up briefly to study his face. Then, without a word, she adjusted the tie’s knot.

Just as he said, that day was today. The day the Duke of Libert’s final will would be revealed to the world.