The air felt thin.
It was like sharing the act underwater.
It was hard to understand. The air was insufficient, and I was too exhausted to concentrate.
“Clumsy and awkward.”
Disconnected words reached my ears. Even in my daze, I smiled a little because there was a smile hanging on his lips before me.
I saw his beautiful eyes sharpen keenly. I felt regretful that the small smile that had formed quickly disappeared, but only for a moment before my eyes widened. He entered me again.
The prince didn’t let go until dawn broke.
When I said it hurt, he used his thighs, but when it seemed I’d improved, he tried to continue ravaging me. When I dozed off from exhaustion and startled awake, he was touching me. When our eyes met, he entered inside me.
I knew that was really strange.
He clearly wasn’t in rut.
I had learned how ferocious alphas in rut became. Yesterday I stood before him with that kind of resolve. Benedict did reach out his hands immoderately, but he didn’t lose his reason, submerged in lust. He persistently examined me and sometimes waited. I could feel reason and emotion.
I thought about the prince who, every time I asked about his rut, evaded answering and kissed me over and over, who used that as an excuse to fondle me over and over.
Prince Benedict’s rut deficiency seemed to be cured now.
Or else,
He’d been pretending to have the deficiency all along.
Thinking that, when I opened my eyes, I’d been left alone in the room.
The large interior I hadn’t properly seen yesterday came into view. Beyond the four-poster bed columns, I could see the slightly open terrace door. Even though a gentle breeze was entering, slightly lifting the summer curtains, pheromones still spread thickly throughout the room.
As I tried to sit up, I couldn’t help but scream.
“……”
With trembling hands, I opened the robe that was neatly tied. I swallowed trembling breaths. Like a sick person, all the delicate parts of my body were red and sensitively swollen.
I endured the pain and sat up. Putting strength into my ankles that bore handprints, my lower body hurt too much again. I barely managed to sink down to the floor.
Rilke, who had spent the night with the prince, came to mind again.
The prince, who coveted me over and over when dealing with me, had embraced Rilke only once that day. That one time was done carefully in a quiet atmosphere. I even remember them falling asleep together.
That dawn. Rilke, who had seen off Benedict after waking early, approached right in front of where I was hiding as if knowing exactly where I was. That child seemed convinced I had already seen, and seemed to want to boast. That triumphant gait.
But right now, I can’t walk.
If Rilke had been hiding in this room the same way and saw everything like me. What would that child have said? Rilke seemed to want to flaunt being loved. I endured my body’s throbbing pain and hugged my knees, curling up. Somehow I felt I wouldn’t be able to be as confident as that child.
“I’ve come to examine your body.”
Sana said she came by Prince Benedict’s command.
Today she had her hair tightly tied back, typical of her. She pulled over a chair and sat by the bedside without concern.
What in the world was her identity?
Until now, she had seemed like the prince’s lover. An omega and a rare magic swordsman like Benedict. An appearance as elegant and eye-catching as a slender, outstretched sword.
Unable to tell her where it hurt, Sana just cast recovery magic over my whole body. Just that made me feel much better. She cast recovery magic once more.
“…Yes. I think I’ll be able to walk.”
But my heart was still unsettled. Was she a lover? Or a promised mistress?
Both a lover treating me and a mistress treating me were strange.
“I’ll guide you to where you’ll be staying.”
But Sana was only dry, without emotion.
“Sana.”
In the end, I spoke first while following behind her. Perhaps out of consideration for me, she was walking very slowly.
“I heard you were at the northern gate.”
The northern gate, called the front line, was a place where monsters constantly appeared.
The reason there had been no significant talk even though she received a knight’s title several years ago despite being a commoner, until she was appointed as the prince’s official guard. Stefan had told me about such things.
“It was a harsh place.”
Sana was the person who had slaughtered the most monsters at the northern gate after Benedict.
“You must have suffered much. I thank you as an imperial citizen.”
“Yes, that’s true. But sometimes this place seems harsher.”
We soon arrived at the room. It was a room not far from the prince’s, just before the area connected to the spiraling tower.
As soon as I entered, the Roen River was flowing outside the wide-open window. Sana explained this was Shade Outer Palace.
Around the Roen River that flowed surrounding the capital Romanetique, there were many outer palaces and nobles’ villas, which had been built as refuges during the epidemic that ravaged the capital during the reign of Emperor Relliuro in the past. I had heard that Shade Palace was also one such purpose and was the late emperor’s most beloved outer palace.
Sana left right away, and I was left alone.
I placed my hand on the mirror positioned near the door. I touched my pale eye area tinged with purple, as if indicating a poor condition.
Is it okay to keep staying here? What’s going to happen?
And what do I want to do?
Like the lingering soreness all over my body, I was only confused.
I dozed off and when I woke up, it was night.
I awkwardly ate a few bites of the dinner a palace servant brought, and when I came out after washing, Prince Benedict was waiting.
I flinched a little, but the prince treated me calmly as if nothing had happened. Unlike yesterday, I couldn’t see any signs of rut at all. I thought he wasn’t going to pretend anymore. So while awkwardly answering his inquiry about my well-being, I naturally thought nothing like that would happen either—
“No… Your Highness, I—”
The body I had checked in the morning was unpleasantly covered in marks. I didn’t want to show such a body.
But like yesterday when he was sometimes forceful, I couldn’t refuse the hand that reached out casually.
I was seated on the bed and my robe was pushed aside on both sides. Even though it was mottled like something diseased in places, the prince didn’t seem to mind. My chest was pinched hard. I looked at him in surprise but he paid no attention. The tips of both breasts, swollen red and strange, were repeatedly touched and fondled.
“Wait… wait a moment,”
After doing that for a while, I urgently grabbed the hand trying to spread my legs.
Before I knew it, I’d been pushed back to the head of the bed. I pulled up my bare knees. The deep eyes looking down at me from close enough to feel his breath seemed to disturb my insides. The fear that had surged up became meaningless as I unknowingly lost strength.
Even though the still painful and sensitive part was only slightly exposed, it was immediately touched. I confusedly let the place that should be carefully treated with my legs slightly open be touched as he pleased. I gave in with a sense of loss and emptiness. It felt like I’d crossed a large river that couldn’t be turned back.
Before I knew it, I was lying down completely.
“Joachim……”
He bit my lips.
Soon he pushed in harder and I endured, biting the back of my hand. It was overwhelming, but each time my name was called, a tingling flutter rose up.
Benedict furrowed his thick eyebrows and looked down at me.
“Why are you tight again? —While you’re still like this, red—”
Like when he first entered, it wasn’t opening all the way.
“…Hng……”
He tried while enduring in that state, but it didn’t go well. When he kept failing to put it all in, my body was turned over. The sleeve of the robe wrapped around my arm was completely pulled down. I became naked and lay face down, powerlessly showing my back.
The hot hand that stroked the nape of my neck rubbed my shoulders and shoulder blades, caressed my spine, and went down to my waist. He whispered that my back was sleek and beautiful.
“Ah…… ah, wait a moment,”
The tight area below barely opened. It was pushed in persistently and repeatedly as if forcibly making it fit. The air was full of the smell of oil and his pheromones.
It felt like being lost in a maze. With a hopeless heart as if wandering through a maze, I looked back at Benedict. Unable to find a clue in those absorbed eyes, I just closed my eyes as if stepping into a place I couldn’t escape from.
“……!”
Suddenly there was no more leisure. After forcibly digging into the tender flesh several times, in an instant it was pushed in deeply all at once like diving underwater.
I swallowed a scream into my mouth. Strength left my arms with a thud. While lying face down, I was tightly embraced before I knew it.
“Ah, Joachim—”
He whispered low in a tightening voice that it was warm.
Pleasure accompanied by cold sweat resonated through my whole body. The body heat embracing me tightly from behind was breathless and hot. For a moment I couldn’t even see ahead. We collapsed onto the bed together with a thud.
Benedict gave a moment’s respite as if giving time to adjust, or as he said, as if tasting the temperature of that intimate place. My limbs trembled, unable to move because the area below was too overwhelming. Benedict, who had been caressing my body soothingly for a while while embracing me from behind, sighed low. As if to say enough, he bit my earlobe once hard, then began moving his body in that state.
“Ungh, —hah,”
I kept pushing him out.
“Accept more.”
I panted, unable to escape from the pain-like tremor that spread to the tips of my hair. Just gasping to make it less painful while open in numbing pain. That thing the prince had criticized the previous night as being clumsy.
Yet Benedict kept pushing in, coveting me as if enchanted. He kept digging into that tight place as if parting something dense. I unconsciously licked his tongue that kissed me after turning my head as if slightly sucking it.
“Joachim……”
What made it bearable nevertheless was that he called my name occasionally.
My body was laid flat again and kissed. When I responded to his surprisingly soft tongue, he swallowed a breath. Then he passionately entangled his lips. The movement ravaging below also intensified. Barely able to breathe and gasping, I barely pulled my lips away.
“You handle pheromones better than I do.”
The prince, having regained composure, spoke.
Even in the clumsiness, the pupils loosely relaxed after reaching climax and the jewel-like shining red irises were terribly captivating. It felt like I would be entranced.
“Why don’t you use pheromones?”
