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0. He was lusting.
"Yes, that's when I realized it."
Twenty-three-year-old Asherad said this as he toyed with the tip of her breast. The green boy he had been was gone, and the sensual woman spreading her legs before him was overwhelmingly alluring.
When he tormented the peak of her breast with his fingers, Daphne's lips parted.
Already glistening from being teased by his tongue, it stood stiff with arousal. Finding it adorable, he flicked it a few times with his hand, then looked at Daphne, held captive in his arms, and spoke.
"That I was lusting after you."
Blue eyes as though brimming with moisture. Golden hair that grew more vivid in color with age. Lips red as ripe fruit, glistening red.
Yes, it had been that way back then too.
Back then, Asherad had lusted after Daphne. He had felt a lust so intense it was unbearable. And so……
As if to release the emotions he had felt back then right here, his hands descended recklessly downward. He needlessly stimulated with his fingers the place already wet, as if anticipating taking him in.
"Hn!"
Daphne twisted her hips. Her lips, desperately suppressing and swallowing the sounds that threatened to escape, looked pitiful and petty. He pushed his thumb between her teeth. The slick mouth swallowed his thumb, and sounds leaked out through it anyway.
"You have to let me hear you."
Asherad smiled broadly as he looked at his thumb, bitten in Daphne's mouth. When she gazed at it with a tearful expression, still holding it in her lips, he could hold back no longer.
"Ah!"
He pried open her damp legs and entered in one stroke. She was already prepared to receive him, yet every time he pushed into her, Daphne opened her mouth and let out something like a moan.
Each time, he felt like he was going mad.
"Ahh, ahh! Ah!"
Unable to close her mouth with the thumb shoved in it, sweet sounds leaked from her. From the very beginning, his movements were violently, almost cruelly intense.
As if to make her feel exactly what he had felt back then, he rolled through the forest of pleasure with his woman, gasping under its sway. Yes, that was the emotion that green boy had harbored. Nineteen-year-old Asherad had…… for the first time, felt lust for a woman called Daphne.
For a woman he had considered worse than a dog.
* * *
Four years earlier, once more.
Nineteen-year-old Asherad, left alone in the room, was dumbfounded. He was staring at his own trousers, swollen with surging blood. She had greeted him and left without even knowing what the thing proudly announcing its presence was—she clearly had no idea.
But the problem was that Asherad did know.
"Why?"
It was absurd. This was a comedy. He had gotten hard because he wanted to do it with that woman? With her? This?
Because he liked things clean and orderly, he had planned never to share his body with anyone but the fiancée who would support him.
But the moment that dirty, filthy—even lowborn—woman's hand touched him, as if some button had been pressed, the space between his legs reacted and his breath began to quicken.
Was he doing a seductress's work, her mother having supposedly been a seductress?
No. Asherad wasn't stupid enough to blame others.
This was simply that his body had grown aroused of its own accord the moment her hand touched him. It had been strange from the moment her hand touched his thigh. Strange from the moment her bare skin touched his back.
For the first time, Asherad felt regret.
And at the same time, rage rose in him.
The Prince of Pindus—that bastard—had felt the same thing he now did. And yet he understood why he had felt it.
The dog he had trampled beneath his feet was, little by little, radiating charm.
The innocent blue eyes looking up at him from beneath him were clear. The teeth visible between the slightly parted lips beneath that straight nose were remarkably even.
Her loosened golden hair was radiant.
He wanted to ravish those defenseless lips, trample them, and feel pleasure. He wanted to savor without exception the tears welling in those large eyes, and make her cry again.
It was truly madness. He had gone mad. If he could feel pleasure toward a dog, was he a son of a bitch himself?
Well, perhaps he was.
He thought of Daphne's hair. Of the lips that had curled into a gentle smile the moment he cleared up her misunderstanding.
What did it matter if he was a dog?
If anyone dared approach his beautiful puppy again, he would kill them with his own hands. And if that beautiful dog showed him her back again, ran from him, avoided him—he would make certain she could never escape him again.
It was a very simple matter.
* * *
Daphne beamed. Asherad cherishes me. They say His Highness the Crown Prince holds me dear! For days, Daphne was lost in happy thoughts.
No matter how difficult life in the imperial palace was, it didn't matter. It was enough that Asherad cherished her and kept her by his side.
That man was so upright and handsome that merely thinking of him made her heart tremble.
"You. Come here."
Daphne turned at someone's call. When she turned, she flinched.
It was Olga, one of Asherad's personal ladies-in-waiting. A fallen baroness, she had reportedly been quite close with Asherad's late wet nurse.
Olga.
Frozen with fear, Daphne shuffled backward. There was only one thing this woman did……
"Grab her!"
Daphne startled and struggled, but the maids of the Crown Prince's palace seized her.
"Wh-what—! Kyah!"
Daphne started and thrashed, but a hand was clapped over her mouth. Roughly dragged along by the maids' arms, Daphne was soon thrown into a dark room.
"What is the meaning of—"
"Strip her."
"Kyah—!"
The maids grabbed Daphne's arms and lunged to tear off her clothes. Daphne struggled and screamed, but cloth was shoved into her mouth, and the sound soon became the whimpering cry of a beast.
Naked and forced into a humiliating posture, she squeezed her eyes shut the instant she saw Olga's gleaming eyes looking down between her legs.
It was like appraising a beast soon to be slaughtered. Olga observed Daphne's smooth flesh, searching for any trace of a man's touch.
"Put them on!"
Clothes flew at Daphne, who trembled with shame. Too enraged even to lash out, Daphne clutched the clothes and covered herself.
Olga sighed and said:
"Come to think of it, His Highness would never lay a hand on a thing like you."
Daphne clenched her teeth.
"You should have…… you should have asked me! If you'd asked, that would have been enough!"
With a sharp crack, stars burst before her eyes.
"I've never once found anyone I questioned who told the truth!"
Olga's primary purpose was to monitor and drive off the women who approached the Crown Prince. But Daphne, ignorant of the rumors, had never imagined it would take such a humiliating form.
"Do not harbor impure thoughts toward His Highness the Crown Prince. Especially a daughter of a seductress like you!"
It was less advice than an insult wrapped in a warning. As if to say such as her had no right to touch him. Daphne knew that, too.
"Soon, many people will be arriving from other countries."
"……"
"Candidates for Crown Princess."
Daphne fell silent at that. Seeing it, Olga smiled thinly. As if to say she knew exactly what Daphne harbored in her heart.
"If you so much as lay a body with His Highness, I will kill you."
A tear fell from Daphne's eye.
* * *
Daphne was crying alone. No matter how tightly she wrapped her clothes around herself, the shame of having been forcibly bared before so many would not fade.
If they had simply called her lowborn, told her to keep away, she would have understood. Because she truly was lowborn.
Daphne wiped away the falling tears.
"What's that noise over——"
Daphne, who had been crying in a corner, rose to her feet. She had been caught by a knight making his rounds. She bit her lip and looked up at him.
Tears slid down her cheeks. The red-haired knight was staring at her with a puzzled expression.
He looked at her disheveled clothing.
"Excuse me, miss."
"……"
"Miss. Are you in some sort of trouble……"
At the knight's gentle words, Daphne shook her head desperately.
Eyes like a rabbit's, brimming with tears, turned toward the knight. The knight stared, entranced, at the face of the girl trembling with shame.
Daphne bit her lip. She had thought no one was there. Why, of all things, did a knight have to come along now. Daphne rose from where she sat and fled.
"Fabian! You said you sensed something!"
At the voice, Fabian turned around.
"Owen, that person going there—is she a maid?"
"Ah……. That woman. Isn't that the seductress's daughter?"
"The seductress's daughter?"
"What, you know. His Majesty's mistress."
"Ahh……. So that girl who claimed to be the Emperor's daughter is that woman?"
Owen nodded as he spoke.
"Be careful. Both His Majesty and His Highness the Crown Prince loathe that woman enough to grit their teeth."
"……
How pitiful."
Fabian murmured quietly. Seeing it, Owen spoke.
"Fabian, don't get any strange ideas."
"Hm?"
"You mustn't bring trouble down on Count Rocania, who pushed for your posting here."
At Owen's warning, Fabian twisted up the corner of his mouth and said:
"Right, I must devote my utmost loyalty."
Fabian gave a small laugh. But his eyes never left the corridor down which she had bolted.
"Still, she's pretty, that woman."