Not a Request—It's an Order
The iron-walled maid who never lost her composure before anyone in the mansion.
That same Aria now staggered backward, her face flushed crimson as she clamped a hand over her lips.
"Hah... hah... What did I just...?"
The breath that barely escaped between her fingers was ragged and broken.
Aria's mind, as she retreated, was a storm of pure chaos.
Why... did I obey that order?
The hand that should have shoved him away had instead wound around Ian's neck. She had responded eagerly, following his lead. Normally she would have slapped his cheek or twisted his wrist into submission.
She was, after all, one of the most renowned maids of the Lancel family.
Yet just now—
When Ian had wrapped his arm around her waist and crushed her breath with his own... Aria had not resisted.
"Hah... nn..."
The rough sensation that had plundered her mouth still left her legs trembling and weak.
That savage sense of domination, which had paralyzed her reason, made her heart pound as if it would burst.
A lie... That I didn't... hate it... Me?
The most chilling part was herself.
In that brief moment crushed beneath his arrogant touch, she had felt a vicious thrill that completely trampled her reason.
Impossible...
Outwardly she had played the noble maid, yet the dark craving buried deep inside her had awakened at a single touch.
Far from rejecting the kiss, she had accepted his tongue as if starving for it—and that fact filled her with maddening shame.
"Hah... hah..."
In Aria's blue eyes, self-loathing and humiliation swirled violently with the afterimage of irresistible pleasure.
Looking down at her perfectly shattered form, the corner of Ian's mouth curved upward.
Preference: Desire to submit to coercive domination
I saw it. The true nature you keep so tightly locked away.
A vicious submissiveness that yearned to yield under forced control.
Watching Aria completely broken, Ian let out a soft snort of laughter.
So that's all that was hiding inside the haughty maid.
He wanted to devour her right then, but he did not rush.
The conclusion earned through eleven Retries.
Coercion only breeds resistance.
What truly needed to be caged was not the body, but the heart.
Ian slowly approached and laid a hand on Aria's trembling shoulder.
Then he let a voice drip out—so tender it was almost theatrical.
"Aria. Because of that sense of duty to protect our family..."
"You've been suppressing yourself so hard it's been unbearable, hasn't it?"
"...What? What are you talking about..."
"Stop pretending. I know you train alone every single night."
"You don't have to push your body that hard."
The moment the gentle voice slipped into her ear, Aria's pupils shook violently.
The brutal training she had endured with tears of blood for the Count who had taken her in.
A secret even the Count who had shown her kindness did not know.
A lonely struggle she had borne alone.
I thought no one would ever know...
Yet the playboy young master she had known for barely a day had seen her blood-soaked efforts with perfect clarity.
My efforts... weren't in vain.
At the exact instant her ironclad heart wavered, Ian drove the wedge in with cruel precision.
Pressing his lips flush against her ear, he whispered low.
"And... stop living like that, enduring everything alone."
"...!"
The moment that low, cruel voice sank into her ear, Aria's mind went blank white.
Suddenly the secret memory of last night—holding her breath alone in her bedroom—flashed through her mind with searing force.
The intimate yearning she dared not even speak aloud, directed at the noble Count who had taken her in.
The shameful secret that made her lift her skirt alone every night, fingers sinking deep while she longed for the Count's embrace.
Hah... nn, Count...
Please... just once, even just once, take me...
Even for a single moment... I want to be your woman...
Unable to contain the bursting yearning and loneliness, she had soaked her own body while crying out only the Count's name on those cruel nights.
Could he... know my secret?
Does he know everything I do alone every night while thinking of the Count?!
A massive terror crashed over her—that even her secret loneliness and hidden heart had been laid completely bare.
Yet strangely, it did not feel unpleasant.
The shame of having her unspeakable weakness exposed.
But what followed was a strange flutter—the sense that this man understood her completely.
Ian pulled the frozen Aria into a tight embrace, as if she were something precious.
"Hah..."
At the solid, warm heat that flooded in, Aria sucked in a breath.
The rough scent of his body pricking her nose, the feel of his chest.
In that fleeting instant, the young Count's face from years past overlapped with Ian's unfamiliar features in a way that made her skin crawl.
Ah... Count...?
She could no longer tell them apart.
The reason that had tried to erase the doubt crumbled completely.
Does the young master truly know everything about me?
Whether he was embracing her because he knew her heart, or whether it was pure coincidence—she could not distinguish in the confusion, and a strange heat bloomed low in her belly.
To hold back the moan that threatened to spill from her lips, Aria had to clench her molars tight.
Unable even to speak the Count's name, she looked up at Ian with thoroughly wet eyes and stammered.
"Ian... Young Master..."
Her eyes were still full of doubt and shame.
As if savoring Aria's perfect collapse, Ian breathed a breath against her ear that was cruelly sweet.
"In front of me, you don't have to try to carry everything alone, Aria."
"If it's hard, you can say it's hard."
"If you want to cry, cry. If you want to cling, cling."
"I'll take it all."
Ian's low, tender voice tickled her ear.
The strange relief lasted only a moment before cold reason poured down like ice water.
No. This man is the notorious playboy Young Master Ian.
Why is he shaking me like this? What is he after...!
Her status as a maid.
And the massive shame at her own body that had reacted while imagining the Count in this man's arms.
The pounding of her heart felt like it would tear a scream from her throat, so Aria roughly shoved Ian away.
"...Young Master. Your joke has gone too far."
In Aria's eyes, as she gasped for breath, a beast-like wariness flashed—the look of one whose weakness had been exposed.
She lowered her head as if to hide her flushed face and fled the office without looking back, slamming the door behind her.
Thud—!
Alone in the bedroom after the door closed, Ian watched the doorway Aria had fled through and let out a quiet laugh.
"Of course she wouldn't fall in one go."
It didn't matter.
A massive crack had already formed in her ironclad walls.
Outside the door, Aria leaned her back against the cold wall and dragged in ragged breaths.
Her fingertips trembled violently.
He's truly a strange man. No... but why don't I hate it?
Her hidden efforts and solitude.
Those deep eyes that had seen through everything about her.
The lingering gaze made her lower belly heat up once more.
She loathed how uncontrollably she was shaking, yet the premonition that she would never be able to push that touch away filled Aria with maddening fear.
That afternoon.
Aria was silently packing in the storage room for Ian, who would leave the mansion in a week.
She was deliberately working her body harder to erase the turmoil in her heart.
Clatter.
A dark, musty storage room Ian would normally never set foot in.
Ian quietly walked in carrying a single teacup.
"Aria. Drink this while you work."
"...Young Master?"
Aria stiffened reflexively and fixed Ian with a cold stare.
Because of the morning's events, an invisible tension bristled over her entire body like thorns.
Ian paid it no mind and casually held the teacup out in front of her.
"You're preparing this much for me. I should repay you somehow."
"Earl Grey with exactly three drops of lemon juice."
"That's your favorite blend, isn't it?"
"...!"
Aria's blue eyes trembled finely.
Goosebumps rose at how precisely he knew even her most personal tea preference, yet she bit her lip and refused to lower her guard.
"...Thank you. But there is no need for the Young Master to do such things himself—"
"And this."
What Ian casually set down beside her was a small jar of ointment.
"You've been covered in bruises from training every night. I was worried, so I brought it."
"Make sure you apply it before bed."
Aria's eyes shook violently.
Bruises...? How does the Young Master know about the bruises on my body...?
Marks she had never shown anyone and never could.
"This isn't a request. It's an order."
The word "order" stabbed into Aria's ear.
Normally a coercive attitude should have sparked rebellion.
Yet strangely, the moment Ian's word "order" struck her ear—
Thump.
The same strange thrill of domination she had felt while kissing him that morning washed over her entire body again.
Why does my heart race at words like this...
Moreover, her blood-soaked efforts that even the Count did not know—
Only the Young Master had been watching.
Just how far has he been watching me...?
The surge of emotion mixed with the fear of having everything about her seen through, and Aria could not bring herself to pick up the ointment jar.
She only stared at Ian with complicated eyes.
"Ah, right. And starting tomorrow, could you teach me a bit of swordsmanship?"
"...Swordsmanship, you say?"
"Now that I think about having to go outside in a week, I suddenly feel uneasy."
At Ian's sudden proposal, Aria blanked for a moment.
The Young Master who had always seemed incompetent and pathetic was, for the first time, asking for "strength" with his own mouth.
Crushed by the kindness of having her efforts recognized and the strange pressure that held her preferences in its grip, Aria finally lowered her head.
"...Understood, Young Master. Come to the rear garden starting tomorrow."
The sharp rejection was gone, yet doubt and wariness still lingered at the edge of her voice.
"Thank you, Aria."
Ian left the office without lingering, wearing a satisfied smile.
A retreat paved with thorough calculation.
Thud—.
Alone after the door closed, Aria looked back and forth between the teacup and ointment jar Ian had left.
This man approached sweetly, yet at decisive moments he tried to control and command her perfectly as the master of the house.
In that meticulous, confident retreating figure, Aria felt the intense afterimage of the Count who had once commanded the family in his youth.
"...Why do I keep seeing the Count overlapping with him?"
The mutter that slipped from her lips was less a strange emotion and more a groan crushed by an unidentifiable pressure.
Even as she sensed she had stepped into the sweet trap Ian had laid, Aria finally hugged the ointment to her chest.
She still did not know that it would be the first choice to completely overturn her life.