Chapter 144
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 144
Oscar, who had been laughing for some time, ran a hand down his face.
“Then should I walk around with my head bowed, too?”
“…Why would you do that, Your Excellency?”
“You said people walk around like that because they’re ugly.”
“No. Your Excellency is handsome—”
The words died in her throat, childish and trivial. As she spoke, her rounded ears flushed red, as if she were embarrassed by her own admission.
A faint current seemed to ripple through his chest. An inexplicable, ticklish warmth bloomed within him.
To think that he, a man who had survived countless crises and never hesitated to put his own life on the line, was reacting this way to what amounted to teenage banter.
It was a weakness, indeed.
This woman, whose origins and upbringing were a mystery, was his missing piece. She was the part of him that should have been there all along, and now he could never return to a time before her.
Even if the same wasn't true for her.
But he was a selfish man, one who wasn't satisfied until he got what he wanted.
Exhaling a long, slow breath, Oscar made up his mind. The decision was so quick it felt impulsive. No, it felt as though there was simply no other way.
I’ve truly gone mad, he thought, then spoke as if stamping a final seal on the matter.
“Marry me.”
Seo-ah, who had been biting her lip with a flushed face, snapped her head up. In her brown eyes, which he was finally looking straight into, Oscar saw his own reflection.
He appeared to be feigning composure, but the anxiety hidden just beneath the surface was plain to see. The more he felt it, the more he forced his expression to become relaxed, almost arrogant.
“Pardon?”
“You understand everything else just fine. Why is that so hard to comprehend?”
“Marriage…”
“Yes.”
“With me?”
“Who else is here besides you and me?”
Oscar stared directly at Seo-ah’s face, which had frozen in sheer bewilderment, and spoke with deliberate weight behind every syllable.
“Marry me.”
The woman’s eyes, which usually seemed like empty shells, widened to their absolute limit.
Seo-ah, who he thought would have shown a lukewarm reaction if he’d announced his marriage to another woman, seemed utterly speechless at his arrogant, command-like proposal. Her mouth parted. It felt as if the question ‘Why?’ would slip past her soft lips at any moment.
But the word she uttered defied his expectations.
“No.”
“No?”
He knew she wouldn’t meekly agree.
But her refusal went beyond mere firmness; it carried a conviction that such a thing was an impossibility. This time, she didn’t even avert her gaze. Instead, she stared back, her wide, unblinking eyes asserting her will.
“Yes. The answer is no.”
A cruel smile played on Oscar’s lips.
“You were the one who said you would stay by my side.”
“Asking to stay by Your Excellency’s side in no way means I wish to marry—”
He had no reason to listen to any more of her articulate protests.
“Have you forgotten what you did just to stay by my side?” Oscar cut her off ruthlessly. Her wide brown eyes shook violently. “The things you did. The nights we spent together.”
When her trembling gaze threatened to fall, Oscar reached out and grabbed her cheek.
“Do you do those things with just anyone?”
Even as he asked, Oscar knew the answer. The woman before him was driven by a certain purpose, and she was willing to do anything to achieve it. So, would it have been any different if another man had been the Marquis?
When his thoughts reached that point, it felt as if he had swallowed fire.
With his free hand, Oscar drew the curtain over the carriage window. Then, he grabbed her waist and yanked her toward him. Pulled off balance, Seo-ah fell against his body. Documents scattered to the floor with a rustle, but neither of them spared them a thought.
A much harsher tone slipped from his lips.
“Do you… do those things with just anyone?”
Her face, trapped in his grip, contorted. Her eyes, painfully furrowed, wavered. Yet, perhaps because they were so close, Oscar felt he could see an unyielding core hidden deep within her trembling gaze. A core that was small but intensely concentrated, one that could never be uprooted.
Her true nature, hidden behind a timid demeanor, surfaced in an instant, like a sandbar revealed by a receding tide.
The question of whether she would do such things with just anyone seemed to have struck a nerve. Seo-ah looked down at Oscar and opened her mouth. This time, she didn’t hesitate, stutter, or waver.
“No.”
It was a brief, single-word reply.
Yet the true self Seo-ah revealed in that one word—so unlike her it felt like a lie—overwhelmed him. Surprisingly, there was something of a wolf in her.
Oscar, who had frozen for a moment, pulled her fiercely against him.
Just being this close made his body ache with desire. Heat pooled in his lower abdomen like an animal in heat, and at the thought of her warmth, the fire spread through his entire body in an instant. He wanted to press against her without a single gap, to leave his mark, to stain her pale, flat stomach with his lust.
He thought she was finally showing her true self, only for every word out of her mouth to be a rejection.
It was the same even now.
His pathetic body was already reacting to her mere touch, yet Seo-ah was pressing her hands against his chest, trying to push him away. Oscar glared at her and pried her hands from his chest. Then, he pushed himself off the backrest and leaned in.
He drew so close their breaths mingled completely. At a distance where their lips would touch with the slightest tilt of his head, Oscar angled his face as if to kiss her then and there.
Seo-ah, pulling back as far as she could, held her breath. It was as if she didn’t even want to share the same air with him.
Oscar smirked, his lips twisting as he commanded, “Kiss me.”
“……”
“Press your lips to mine. Yourself.”
With both her hands and her waist pinned, Seo-ah seemed to have lost the ability to speak.
As much as his heart had been worn down, emptiness, desolation, and anger surged within him. An urge welled up to engrave his mark on her in any way possible, since she seemed to find no meaning in him.
His handsome face twisted cruelly.
“Do you want to go to Traun?”
“……”
“You’ll even strip if I ask, so long as it means going to Traun, won’t you?”
A sharp chill pierced her.
A familiar, murderous cold washed over him. The same dread he felt at the moment of taking a life licked across his heart.
Every word must be carving pieces out of her. Even knowing that, he couldn’t stop.
“If you’re willing to strip for it, a kiss should be nothing, right?”
Tears began to gather, blurring the image of the true self that had surfaced like a silent sandbar. Her roughly gripped wrists trembled faintly, and she began to bite down mercilessly on her barely healed lips.
His icy blue eyes, a cruel smile playing on his lips, stared piercingly into her completely shattered brown ones.
Though tears finally welled up, dulling their sparkle, Seo-ah fought to keep from crying. Oscar easily subdued the woman twisting to escape him, barely needing to exert any strength.
“Let me go.”
“……”
“Please…”
He grabbed her pale cheek as she tried to turn her face away. A lukewarm droplet trickled down the back of his hand.
Those were tears that he had caused.
Then, do these tears belong to me?
His thoughts drifted in a bizarre direction.
She wept silently, only trying to escape. Ah, she doesn’t even want to speak to me anymore? Holding onto the woman struggling to break free, Oscar grabbed the back of her head and crushed his mouth to hers as if to obliterate them. The tip of her nose buried against his cheek.
“Mmph!”
The moment his lips touched her soft, uninjured ones, his entire body seemed to melt. Just the touch of her drove him mad, as if she were a drug.
Her struggling didn't matter. Oscar bound her with all his strength, then forced his way past her tightly closed lips with his tongue. The hot, wet interior he breached was sweet. Her shallow breaths, the slickness of her mouth, her smooth, small tongue—everything was unnaturally sweet.
He poured his saliva into her and drank hers in return. Every time his tongue swept up the narrow, warm cavern of her mouth, the blood in his veins seemed to turn to thick honey.
He felt like he was going insane.
For this, he felt he would gladly give up everything he owned.
“Ha… mmph!”
He didn't allow her even the briefest moment to draw breath.
Oscar had no intention of showing mercy to her pathetic attempts to avoid him, to flee, to somehow escape. The more she tried, the tighter he bound her. Cupping her small head with both hands, he devoured every last drop of her breath.
“Ha… s-stop… mmph.”
You, too, lost your mind because of me at least once. I remember you vividly—flushed, groaning, softened like a peach ripened under the summer sun.
A single, shiny tear slipped from the corner of her tightly closed eye.
Oscar’s rough, forcing movements came to a halt. At that, her struggling stopped as well.
Only then did Oscar slowly pull his lips from hers.
Haa, haa.
The quiet carriage, previously filled only with the vibration of its wheels, was now thick with the heavy, ragged sound of their breathing.
Oscar stared at Seo-ah with burning eyes.
Her tear-laden eyelashes trembled, and the ragged breath escaping her wet lips was heavy with moisture. Her scent, the one that drove him mad, drifted past his nose, and her body pressed against his was burning hot.
Yet, the moment their eyes met, the tension that had wound his body so tightly drained away, as if a switch had been flipped.