What He Called a Conversation

"Relax."

The low, even voice was oddly reassuring. After a moment's hesitation I slowly let the strength leave my legs, and at once he spread them wide. His solid body settled into the space between them.

Wait—am I really allowed to be swept along like this? Is that all right for a second life? And yet a marriage isn't a marriage until the wedding night is done.

A rush of thoughts left me taut with nerves.

"I'll loosen you until you're soft and melting. So you don't get hurt."

With that chilling murmur, something warm and yielding licked between my thighs.

"I-Ian!"

Startled too late, I kicked and flailed, but his firm body didn't budge an inch. If anything, my struggling only tightened around him and pinned me there. Whether I thrashed or not, he went about his work with perfect calm.

I had never imagined another person's lips would touch me there. Mortified, I clapped both hands over my mouth. My body jerked up on reflex. He seemed pleased by the reaction; the tip of his tongue prodded, then pressed in slow, lingering strokes. After licking for a long while he bared a canine and nipped, shallow and sharp. At the keen sensation my lower belly clenched tight. He laughed.

"I noticed it when I whispered in your ear, too."

I felt his gaze lift to me. Stubbornly, I kept my eyes covered. I had no idea with what face I was supposed to meet his. But before long I had no choice but to look at him.

"You're terribly sensitive."

One thick finger worked its way in along a winding path. I had thought I'd already learned everything there was to know about relations between a man and a woman, and yet here was something new. I sniffled and mumbled.

"Th-this is embarrassing."

"There's nothing embarrassing about it."

The tapping touch came through with startling clarity. My whole body burned as hot as my head. A strange feeling gathered low in my belly, like a tickle building and building. I tried to loosen my legs, but my toes curled of their own accord. I whimpered.

"Can't you just—just do it quickly? This feels strange."

All I wanted was to have it over with, the way it had been with James. I didn't want to know this odd sensation. But Ian soothed my pleading in a gentle voice.

"You'll get hurt if we rush. If I loosen you properly, then you and I can both enjoy the conversation."

Adding a second finger, however, was not gentle in the least. I couldn't protest, and I couldn't escape. Helpless, I kept my face covered, twisting as my legs twitched and trembled.

The sensation kept kindling low inside me, like a fire fed in careful increments, piling up with nowhere to go. I tightened my legs around him as if to hold him there.

"Please……"

When does this end? I hiccupped and urged him on.

"Please, just hurry."

At my words he lifted his head and looked at me. Sparks seemed to leap in those blue eyes. He gripped both my thighs and spread them wide. I covered my face with both hands. My lips trembled.

Yes. Now I understand.

What this strange sensation was.

It was pleasure. Tender flesh parted, and something hard began to push inside. He had barely worked in the first inch, and already I thought I could feel a pulse pounding, fierce and wild.

"Ah—y-you're too—"

I was about to say big when the fullness made me lift my hips a little, as if to flee. Ian didn't miss the opening. He caught my pelvis and drove in with a heavy thrust. The thick, enormous length shoved deep in an instant and struck the very deepest place.

It was as if every firework I had been carefully gathering burst all at once. My whole body shook, and my back arched off the bed. Without meaning to, I dug my nails into my own hand. Tears gathered at the corners of my eyes at a sensation I had never tasted before.

"Th-this, this is—strange. It's strange."

I had left the ducal house of Parnel and chosen this path so I would not entangle myself with James in this life, and never once had I imagined that path would let me taste a pleasure this unfamiliar. Ian caught my sniffling hands.

"Shh. You'll hurt yourself."

His firm hand laced with mine and held tight. I looked at him through tears. His brow was drawn. Sweat beaded on the forehead I had thought so handsome.

"Slowly. I'll go slowly."

I watched him through blurred eyes. He watched me back.

I thought I understood why he called the marital act a conversation. We hadn't exchanged a single word, and yet his feelings seemed to reach me whole. He was as bewildered as I was by the pleasure we were feeling now—startled, at a loss—and still, despite all of that, he liked it so much he didn't know what to do with himself.

Then this is all right, isn't it.

Thinking so, I shook my hand to tell him to let go. He must have decided I was fine, because he released me. I braced my waist and lifted myself a little, then stretched both arms up and wound them around his neck.

"……Olivia."

He said my name as if startled by the embrace. I buried my face in his shoulder and closed my eyes. He muttered, low.

"Damn it."

A rough sound that didn't suit him at all. I had no time to tease him for it. He had begun to move his hips. I let out a ragged breath and tightened the arms around his neck. My head spun.

I clung to his broad chest with all my strength, sniffling like a child, as if the body I was leaning on were the whole of the world.

I had cried out so much that the voice that came out of me the next day sounded exactly like a frog's.

I poked only my eyes out from under the blanket. A tall, lean, handsome man was slipping his arms into a shirt. I whispered at that broad back.

"Fraud."

At the word he turned to look at me. Light glancing off his brilliant golden hair lit his face like some special effect.

No—he might actually be glowing. With a face like that.

But what good was handsome! To me he was nothing but a handsome fraud!

I pouted and kept going.

"Liar. Idiot. Fool."

Ian tilted his head. His tousled golden hair spilled to one side, and even that looked somehow poetic, somehow like a painting. A terrifying kind of beauty.

"I understand idiot and fool. Liar and fraud, I don't."

He answered without a shred of shame. If my waist hadn't been aching, I might have shot upright and jabbed a finger at him. I trembled and shouted.

"You call that an answer? You just deceived the entire world!"

"If correcting a misunderstanding counts as deception."

Having fastened his cuff, he suddenly strode toward me. I was naked beneath nothing but a blanket wound tight around me, and my body shrank in on itself of its own accord.

Ian leaned close and whispered at my ear.

"Then you can tell them in my place."

"T-tell them what."

Instead of answering, he only looked at me with eyes gone soft and curved. And somehow that look itched.

Ugh, this is embarrassing!

If I kept meeting those eyes, I felt sure I'd be dragged along exactly as he wanted. I burrowed into the blanket like a chrysalis, head and all. My hair spilled loose, baring the nape of my neck.

That was my mistake. As if he had been waiting, Ian's lips touched the nape with a soft smack.

I covered my neck with a palm, my mouth working soundlessly. He tilted his head.

"Well. What could it be?"

"Ugh—!"

Infuriating! Absolutely infuriating!

I reached out and shoved at his handsome jaw.

"Go away! Stop clinging!"

"What does it matter. We're husband and wife from now on."

"Even so!"

When I snapped back, he raised both hands and retreated without argument. Red-faced and huffing, I wound the blanket tighter still.

I won't even show you my shoulder.

With that thought I wrapped the blanket—already pulled high—around my entire body. Not long after, I realized something all over again.

What a short-sighted idea that had been.

Like this, I can't even move my arms.

I needed to shove him off, and to shove him off I would have to unwind the blanket I had laboriously wrapped all the way to my shoulders.

"H-hey, w-wait—mmph!!"

Before I could dodge, a long arm hauled me in, blanket and all. Muffled by the covers, my flailing did absolutely nothing. I had tied my own hands!

"Mmph!"

Those pretty, apricot-colored lips covered mine completely.

The inside of his mouth ought to have been warm, and yet it was cold enough to startle me. The liquid he had been holding slid down my throat in a gulp. Then the kiss deepened, growing thicker, more intent.

Only when I was gasping, unable to breathe properly, did the long, passionate kiss end. Eyes flushed red, I glared at him.

"Wh-what did you make me drink?"

Ian, still holding me bundled in the blanket, tipped his head. Infuriatingly, his face wasn't the least bit undone.

"Medicine. I was worried you'd ruin your throat."

Oh, please! Did you think I'd thank you just because you called it medicine?

Do you have any idea how startled I was!

"I can take it myself, you know?!"

I shouted. He frowned and muttered.

"Can you? I seem to recall you saying last night that you couldn't."

When? What hour, what minute, what second?!

I was about to scold him when a memory surfaced and I went stiff as a statue.

Right. I had said something like that last night. During the third round—or was it the fourth.

"Try moving on your own."

"I can't. I can't……"

"If you put a little strength here."

"I can't. I said I can't! I can't do anything, so you do all of it!"

"That is not what I meant by can't!"

I ended up shrieking.

The night I had thought would end after a single bout had gone on without end. He really had turned me soft and boneless, in an entirely different sense. By the end I hadn't even had the strength to sit up straight.

And still he had fussed—something about catching a cold if I didn't wash before sleep, something about putting a nightgown on me—and that was exactly why I had said those words.

And he uses them like this.

I had slept since then. I was in my right mind now. When I glared at him with narrowed eyes, the corner of his mouth curved, loose and easy.

"Ha ha."

That very smile he had shown me yesterday.