If it weren’t for her seductively blurred gaze and glistening lips, Melly would never have accepted reality.

“……Edric.”

Feeling the warmth of the large hands covering both her ears, Melly looked up at the one who had stolen her first kiss.

His blonde hair shimmered even more brilliantly in the chandelier light, and his deep blue eyes held yellow flames as if a fire had been lit in the middle of the ocean.

Melly no longer doubted that those flames were evidence of his desire for her.

But she wanted to ask.

There were many things she wanted to ask.

So many that she didn’t know where to start.

In the end, she had to ask the most important question.

“This…… is impossible. Don’t you have someone you’re going to marry?”

“Is that the only reason it’s impossible?”

“……”

“If that’s resolved, would it be okay?”

Edric’s hands, which had been covering her ears, slid down her neck and gently gripped her shoulders.

“I broke off my engagement.”

“……What?”

“I ended the marriage arrangement.”

He added calmly.

“A few hours ago.”

Melly couldn’t believe what she had heard.

What on earth was going on? Why the broken engagement? For what reason?

She looked up at Edric with eyes demanding a more detailed explanation.

But he didn’t comply with her request.

“Is that enough now? Or are there more reasons why this is impossible?”

He spoke with an aggressive tone, as if he would remove any obstacle, whatever it might be.

Now Melly began to understand bit by bit. Their relationship was changing. The two of them were now precariously straddling the boundary between friends and lovers.

Since when had it been?

When had her unrequited love of ten years, which seemed to have no answer in sight, turned into a mutual relationship?

Melly didn’t know how to accept this sudden change in their relationship. It felt like standing on the blurry border between dream and reality.

It seemed like she could come to her senses if they talked calmly and rationally, but……

Edric didn’t seem to want that to happen.

He seemed to want to be in an even more senseless state, and Melly…… couldn’t tell what she wanted.

“Melly.”

There was a faint tremor in Edric’s voice.

“Do you dislike me?”

This time too, there was a tremor. But soon Melly couldn’t tell if it was the trembling of his voice, or the trembling of his touch as it slid from her shoulders down to the front of her shirt.

“Tell me. Melly.”

His fingers undid the topmost button of Melly’s shirt.

Melly wondered if she was breathing properly.

Without taking his eyes off Melly, Edric quickly undid two more buttons. And then he moved his long fingers to another button.

“If you don’t like it, I won’t do it.”

“……”

True to his words, his hand remained still on the fourth button of Melly’s chest.

Now his gaze was no longer burning.

It was calm and restrained, confident as if he could suppress desire with reason at any time.

It didn’t seem like he had brought her here unable to resist a moment’s urge to take her.

“What should we do?”

Edric’s voice, mixed with his breath, created an erotic atmosphere in the silence.

“Should I stop?”

It was a strange voice.

It was the very essence of human emotion, a mix of temptation, longing, confidence, and self-loathing.

The decision was Melly’s.

He was still gently circling the fourth button with the tip of his thumb,

If Melly refused, he would laugh it off and calmly button up the top three buttons.

And then.

‘I must have gone crazy for a moment. Forgive me, Melly. And let’s be good friends again.’

……he would say with a smile, and they would go back outside the hotel, to the Pelton Duke’s mansion, to their respective positions, to their respective worlds.

Melly asked herself.

‘Can you do that?’

Could she go back to being just friends, laughing and talking about today’s events as if they were just a passing incident, was that possible?

‘No.’

Melly couldn’t do that.

If she hadn’t received his kiss, maybe. If she hadn’t been showered with his ecstatic gaze, maybe. Having tasted the sweetness of his kiss and the longing look directed solely at her, it was impossible to go back to the way things were.

Melly could no longer deceive herself.

“I don’t dislike it.”

“……”

For the first time in her nineteen years of life, Melly gathered her courage.

That much seemed enough for now.

It didn’t seem necessary at this stage to say that she had liked him for a long time, and now loved him to the point of heartache.

It seemed like she could say that gradually.

Edric’s handsome lips smoothly curved into an arc.

She could feel his fingertips, which had been slightly tense, relaxing gently.

‘He was nervous.’

Melly thought it was surprising that even he, who had met many women, could be this nervous. It made her heart flutter even more.

Edric carefully undid the fourth button of Melly’s shirt.

Melly felt her chest become exposed. Her earlobes suddenly felt hot.

He came to kiss her.

It was a much softer, sweeter kiss than the first one.

When Melly, intoxicated by that kiss, suddenly came to her senses, she found that there wasn’t a single thread left on her upper body.

[This is the timeline separator]

‘Miss Melly? She went out with a guest who came. It was Francis from the Adel Viscount family.’

The sensation of one’s mind going completely blank upon hearing those words was truly unfamiliar.

By the time Edric barely regained his senses, he was in the middle of a high-end shopping district.

It seemed he had unconsciously judged that they would naturally be around here, both being nobles, and had moved his feet accordingly.

But Melly wasn’t there.

The place where he found her was ridiculously plebeian, a place where he thought she surely wouldn’t be.

Edric found Melly in Milord Square, but in truth, he wanted to find that other guy first before her.

When he recognized the intricately crafted dark brown pistol hanging from the waist belt and widened his view, that bastard was nowhere to be seen.

He had wanted to put a fourth breathing hole in the middle of his forehead.

At that moment, Melly turned her head while smoothing her hair, disheveled by the wind.

It was a truly unexpected face.

As if something had been shed, it was peaceful, bright, and overflowing with confidence.

Edric’s anger lost its way in the face of this peaceful and dignified appearance that she had never shown him in the past ten years.

Had that fellow made her like this?

Was he such a remarkable person to be able to breathe so much vitality into Melly?

He had thought him to be merely a wretch who had secured the position of an adopted son from a lowly status, and who was still entangled in an unresolved relationship with his own sister.

Edric tasted defeat for the first time in his life.

‘… Edric. How are you here…’

The sight of Melly’s face, upon discovering him, quickly losing its vibrancy and returning to its original melancholy, added misery to his sense of defeat.

The forced, awkward smile even conveyed a sense of tedium, as if from someone who had returned to daily life from a journey.

Edric realized that his mood was being swayed by this woman’s every action more than he had thought.

By someone like Melly, no less. To think that the head of the great noble Pelton duchy would be so affected.

While feeling ridiculous and deflated, on the other hand, it became clearly visible what he should do from now on.

He had to possess Melly.

Whether it was wealth, looks, pretense, weakness, or sympathy, it didn’t matter.

He had to fill this woman with himself using everything he had.

Today. Right now.

[This is the timeline separator]

He raised his upper body.

As he took off his shirt, his well-proportioned, tightly woven muscles boasted clear contours even in the darkness.

She had felt embarrassed being the only one bare-skinned, but now that he was bare-skinned too, the sense of shame lessened somewhat…

But at the thought that this was just the beginning, her senses sharpened even more and her breathing quickened.

His lips covered hers again.

Though they had only removed the one shirt that had been covering the space between them, the intensity itself had changed.

It was a kiss that clearly recognized there was no longer any need for restraint.

Yet it didn’t seem hasty.

He was enjoying the leisure that comes from knowing that the food before him was completely his, that there was nothing left to interfere.

Melly couldn’t tell when she had become Edric’s food. Had there been even the slightest occasion for such a thing between him and her until now? It didn’t seem to be in her memory.

But now, such things didn’t seem to matter.

She would have him. Have him without committing any sin.

Even if it was just for one night, it didn’t matter.

The fact that her one-sided love hadn’t remained just that, but could leave clear traces on her body.

That alone was enough to satisfy Melly. She didn’t wish for anything more.

Although it was a room full of warmth, it wasn’t hot enough to prevent body temperature from dropping.

Melly shivered as her skin felt increasingly bare. Then Edric asked.

“Are you cold?”

“… No.”

Melly smiled faintly.

“You’re lying.”

Edric wasn’t fooled. As long as Melly had been watching him, he had been watching Melly too.

There was no way she, who wore long sleeves even in midsummer, wouldn’t be cold.

“Wait just a moment.”

Edric said.

“You’ll be hot soon.”

“…”

“I’ll make sure of it.”

As if to say ‘you can look forward to it’, his seductive eye-smile made Melly swallow hard.

She knew he could create various appearances if he wanted to, but this was the first time she had seen him look so intensely sensual.

His golden hair that didn’t fade even in the darkness, his bright blue eyes like will-o’-the-wisps, and his large, strong body.

And the sight of that very body moving slowly was just like a male lion.

And Melly felt like an antelope about to be devoured by that lion.

A pitiful herbivore… repeating death and rebirth all night long.