Winter Bud - Chapter 37

“Did she really say that?”

“Hm?”

He asked Thea, who stood before the mirror after leaving him. She’d opened the jewelry box she’d been sorting through and was holding a pair of pearl earrings to her ears when she turned to look at him.

“Why?”

“Did that woman say something useless in front of you…?”

“She said she likes you?”

“…Yes.”

“Well. Do you really need someone to say it out loud for you to know?”

Thea let out a soft laugh. Her face was bright and radiant. Even when she’d said she was jealous of her maid’s beauty, Thea had never looked like someone eaten alive by jealousy. Still, Thea had been sincere in that moment.

“I thought you already knew.”

“Knew what?”

“You know. Women can’t help but lose their composure in front of the men they like.”

“….”

“There are plenty besides her.”

“Well, it’s your fault for being so good-looking,” Thea grumbled irritably. Orestes turned to glance at her, the woman standing before the mirror fixing her appearance again. He remembered the maid who would always run away like a terrified mouse every time their eyes met.

He knew there were plenty of women who admired him. Even setting aside his status, his outer shell was quite excellent. But those women never behaved as irritatingly as that girl did. He frowned slightly.

“Why? You don’t like it?”

“Would I?”

“Being popular’s a good thing. Don’t be annoyed.”

“That girl.”

Orestes frowned slightly. Thea’s sharp face turned toward him. The expression he thought indifferent was stained with emotions far sharper than expected. Of course, he’d never liked Nanna from the beginning. Thea stared at him for a moment, then let out a crooked smile.

“Don’t be like that. She’s nothing but a lowly girl.”

She gently pulled his arm. The towering man moved lightly, as if made of feathers. Drawing her red lips into a smile, Thea leaned against his broad chest. Orestes’s arm wrapped softly around her.

“Nanna’s a pitiful girl.”

Thea murmured in his arms. Orestes replayed a familiar story in his mind. Thea was a good person. She seemed firm but was endlessly soft toward the weak. He remembered how his fiancée had told him she’d saved a young girl who’d escaped from a brothel. That girl had been her. He’d told her to make the girl a maid, but Thea had said it was a waste to keep such beauty as a servant.

He’d wondered then if the girl was really such a great beauty. She was beautiful, certainly. But she could never compare to Thea’s brilliance. Stroking the hair of his still-youthful fiancée, he lifted her pale face.

Meeting her dazzling green eyes, he asked, “Can I kiss you?” Thea said that was not something to ask and lightly punched his chest. He laughed and took her plump lips into his own.

***

“Ahng, haah! Hh, mmh!”

The woman let out a string of breathless moans. He recalled the way she’d whispered that she wanted to have his cock inside her. At those words, he’d lifted her up. When he told her to lie back on the pillow and move her hips herself, she made a tearful face.

With a faintly mocking smile on his lips, he looked up at the whimpering woman. Chirping like a lark, calling, “Your Majesty, Your Majesty,” she reluctantly climbed on top of him when he frightened her. Perched awkwardly on his thighs, she began to move her hips little by little.

Impatient, he taught her one thing at a time. He told her to rub her split vulva against the shaft and massage the glans with the flowing love juice. Nanna murmured that she couldn’t do it. He slid his hand back between her legs. Then, pushing his fingers into her trembling hole, he scooped out her love juice. Using it, he rubbed his cock up and down.

“See? Do it like this.”

“B-but….”

“You said the Duke taught you, but what on earth did you learn?”

He glared at Nanna. Their eyes met, and she flinched as if stabbed by a knife before dropping her gaze. Her lips opened and closed like a fish’s before she raised a trembling hand and shoved her fingers into her vagina. Watching that obscene sight, he hardened below.

His cock was already hard enough; there was no need to massage it. He wanted to push himself into her tight hole right then and start thrusting. But he wanted to savor it a little longer. He wanted to make the woman cry, to see her red, flushed face twist in confusion and pleasure.

“You learned nothing, did you?”

He looked at Nanna and asked. The woman didn’t answer. Somehow, that annoyed him. Thea’s father had told his daughter’s maid to take his cock. That bastard, who seemed incapable of any sexual desire… whose ascetic face could have belonged to a young monk, had violated Nanna. For quite a long time, too. And yet, Nanna would sometimes look at him with that same blank, ignorant face, as if she knew nothing.

Like she was new. Like she’d never known another man but him. He felt a faint thrill, only to crush it with disgust, as if chewing on something foul.

“Why aren’t you answering?”

“W-what?”

“What did he teach you?”

He asked bluntly. He didn’t understand why he was even asking this. He had come to her only to make her conceive. The reason he couldn’t discard her was that the card Duke Everhardt had dealt him was useful. It wasn’t personal feeling…. This woman, or rather, this woman’s womb, was still necessary to him.

But did he really need to know such things?

“N-nothing….”

Nanna lied again. He gripped her neck, as if seizing the neck of a woman who seemed to mock him with unnecessary lies. Startled, Nanna trembled violently. His lips parted coldly.

“You know deceit is vile.”

“I-I didn’t.”

“Nanna.”

“I really didn’t…. It’s true.”

Nanna cried. He looked at her pale face, twisted in pitiful fear. Nanna was used to deceiving him. She lied easily and rarely gave an honest answer to his questions. Almost every question he asked was met with falsehood.

For instance, it was the same after the child died. Orestes knew that Nanna resented him for losing the child. Even at the funeral, she had rushed to him, weeping. “Don’t you feel any sorrow at all?” she had demanded. Trembling like a wounded bird, she’d glared at him.

Since then, Nanna hadn’t smiled at him again. After marriage, even once she understood her place, she would sometimes smile faintly when their eyes met. He remembered that woman who used to blush and smile shyly. Back then, he’d found it cloying, even unpleasant.

It was the same now. And yet….

“So there was nothing between you?”

“Pardon?”

“Nanna.”

He called her name in warning. Though he released her neck, the woman still didn’t move. He looked at her pale, frozen face. The Duke had said it was brief. He hadn’t expected there to be much. But still, seeing Nanna’s naked body now, it was hard to imagine there’d been nothing.

“You’re like an idiot.”

“…You’re probably right.”

“You must be. To feel nothing even while being humiliated.”

He grimaced, picturing Nanna in Duke Everhardt’s arms. As Nanna looked up at him in the dim light, she began to move her hips slightly. Bringing her hands together, she grabbed his cock and tapped the tip against her entrance. He groaned heavily, dizzy with the sight of what she was doing.

She was a woman without any skills. Despite her looks, she moved like a wooden doll, a woman who had to be taught everything one step at a time. He wondered what Duke Everhardt had thought of her, but he didn’t ask. He didn’t want to know. Yet whenever he saw the woman refusing him, he couldn’t help but wonder about their time together. Had she also rejected him like this, acting like a nun?

Or was she refusing only him? Then he grew irritated with himself for wanting to know things he didn’t need to. This woman was the problem. That was why he’d gotten rid of her from his sight. But once she was gone, he’d found himself searching for her within three days. A curse slipped from between his lips.