The Most Comfortable Place (3)
Blackwood Estate. Edan's private quarters.
Having carried Lilith out of the dining hall when she suddenly collapsed, Edan had instinctively brought her to his own bedroom. Now, with her head resting on his thigh, he was gently stroking the hair of the quietly sleeping Lilith.
She hasn't had a proper night's sleep in almost three days. No wonder she's worn out.
It was only natural that Edan — the personal maid who spent most of every day at her side — was the very first to notice how Lilith's condition was deteriorating day by day.
And so, from the very first day when she'd only seemed a little tired, he had urged her to rest. Lilith simply hadn't listened.
Strictly speaking, it wasn't so much that she refused as that she couldn't afford to rest no matter what — but from Edan's perspective, the woman who pushed herself to perform her maid duties every single day had finally collapsed right in front of him, and guilt was impossible to suppress.
After all, the only reason he'd been able to catch her just before she crumpled at the table was that, for some reason, his instincts had been strangely sharp today, and he'd trailed after her without letting her out of his sight.
Laying her head down on his thigh had likewise just... happened, one thing leading to another. His original plan had been to let her sleep on the wide bed in his room.
But every time he tried to pull away from her, Lilith would stir with a pained whimper, fighting toward wakefulness — and so, after a great deal of trial and error, they had somehow ended up in this position.
Has she been having nightmares lately?
If she really had been losing sleep to bad dreams these past few days, there was nothing he could do about it. However much he loved her, there was no way for him to slip into her dreams and protect her there.
In truth, Lilith was plunged into a deep, dreamless sleep simply from feeling Edan's warmth beside her — but there was no way he, barred from the inside of her mind, could have known that.
All he knew was that stroking her hair from beside her seemed to help calm her, and so that was what he did.
Her expression, peaceful and softly breathing with the back of her head pillowed on his thigh, looked impossibly, overwhelmingly adorable to him.
So adorable that an impure desire blossomed before he could stop it — the urge to press a kiss to her sleeping lips.
...Speaking of which, what on earth was that, just now?
Forcing his gaze away from Lilith's lips and turning his thoughts elsewhere, Edan carefully revisited what had happened in the dining room.
After he'd swept her up in both arms and told the other maids present that they should let her rest first — that was when she'd suddenly opened her eyes and looked up at him.
The moment he recalled what she had done next, the heart he'd just barely calmed began pounding all over again.
It definitely wasn't a dream.
Well, Lilith had seemingly been somewhere between sleep and waking when their lips met — but whatever the case, it had been, unmistakably, a kiss from her side.
Not like usual, where he was the one to lean in first or ask for something and have it granted. This was purely Lilith coming to him of her own accord.
The feel of her lips, pressed against his out of nowhere while she lay cradled in his arms — it must have lasted only an instant, and yet somehow it had stretched on far longer.
What could it possibly have meant...?
Right before the kiss, he could faintly remember her calling his name.
Her face had twisted with something like displeasure, as if she were trapped in a nightmare — then she'd called out his name, and her expression had softened. And then, with her eyes slipping open just a little, she'd kissed him.
And her fellow maids had been right there in the same dining hall to witness the whole thing. By tomorrow, he suspected, every kind of rumor would be running wild through the servants' quarters.
I did caution them, just in case...
Isabel, who had followed Lilith all the way to the estate to help with her duties, might keep it to herself — but he honestly didn't have much faith in the pale, pink-haired maid standing nearby.
Then again, Edan didn't particularly mind if word of their kiss spread. Once his relationship with Lilith was officially and widely known, at the very least no one among the Blackwood servants would dare set their sights on her.
More important than any such trivial matter was, as ever, Lilith's heart. However much he loved her, if she didn't want him in return, then the future he dreamed of would remain nothing but a dream.
Only a short while ago, the suggestion that things might go wrong and he'd have to follow the Hero had made him bristle with anger — but ever since Lilith's feelings for him had been made certain, Edan had let that anxiety go and simply settled back into relief.
Whatever else might be true, she had pressed her lips to his first, of her own will. She had forgiven even his attempt to force himself on her. She had done things for him that no one could ever offer unless they were truly in love...
And then there was that inexplicable act from just moments ago. Whatever else it all meant, one thing seemed absolutely clear: she had feelings for him.
"Hnn... hnnngh..."
Sleeping soundly, aren't we. You really were exhausted, weren't you.
"Edan... I told you, don't press on my head..."
"...!!!"
Startled by her sleep-talk, Edan yanked his hand back from her hair.
And in the same instant, with Lilith's head currently resting right atop his lower half, his mind mercilessly conjured up the memory of what she had done between his thighs a few days ago.
The moment her past act — known among the nobility, unofficially, as wrapping the mouth of the wine bottle — sprang naturally to mind, Edan's face flushed scarlet on the spot.
...I never imagined she'd go that far.
He'd assumed that as his personal maid she wouldn't know much of anything about such matters — but seeing that she apparently did, perhaps Lilith was a girl in the full bloom of youth after all.
For a single flash, he even wondered whether her head might be filled with even filthier thoughts than his own — before promptly rejecting the hypothesis. There was no way a girl could be like that.
Not until we graduate from the academy... that was the promise, wasn't it.
The temporary lovers' contract: that they would not consummate their relationship until after graduation, and that if his heart remained unchanged by then, she would give him her answer.
There had been a time when he'd believed she'd proposed it merely to put off answering him. But after what she had done recently, he could no longer see it that way.
Edan had always kept a quiet doubt tucked in a corner of his heart — that his was the only love between them, and that Lilith merely tolerated his affections out of the gap in their stations.
But if her temporary lovers' contract was truly what she meant it to be — and if she, like him, was merely refraining from physical intimacy for the sake of her qualifications as a saintess...
Then perhaps — perhaps, with the exception of that one act, there were other ways they might deepen their relationship a little further. The thought rose in him unbidden.
What she did with her mouth didn't seem to affect her saintess qualifications at all...
If that much was permitted, then were other similar acts permitted too? Aside from anything that could be unmistakably construed as the act between man and woman — was everything else fair game?
In fairness, Edan did mingle with the other noble students at the academy from time to time, and through them he had gradually picked up bits of rather indecent knowledge.
Alongside the wrapping of the wine bottle's mouth he'd recently suffered at Lilith's hands, there were such things as licking the clam soup plate (figurative expressions, all of them), the sausage rubbed between hot dog buns (figurative), or the donut with two holes (figurative).
Loose talk about the somewhat licentious lives of his fellow noble students was simply unavoidable once one moved in aristocratic circles.
However determined he was never to breathe a word about what he and Lilith had shared, he couldn't exactly cover his ears every time some young noble heir boasted of his experiences.
Of course, he'd only ever entertained such things in his own head — he lacked the courage to ever ask her for them outright. He couldn't bear the thought of raising such a topic himself and having Lilith come to dislike him, or worse, look at him with the contempt one reserves for a molester.
...I should probably leave her be, so she can sleep on her own.
It wasn't that her head was heavy, or that he disliked the situation of playing pillow for her.
It was that if he stayed like this, their bodies touching for much longer, he was afraid his own mind would keep wandering somewhere wicked. The mere thought of what had happened the other day was enough to make his head burn all over again.
Carefully, taking care that his hands touched nothing they shouldn't, he lifted Lilith and laid her down on the bed. And the very moment he turned to slip quietly out of the room—
"Ed... an...?"
Her faint voice reached his ears — and a heartbeat later, his body crashed back down onto the bed.
"Wha—?!"
—Thud.
Lilith had grabbed his arm and yanked, and Edan pitched forward face-first onto the mattress — a spectacle that, by any outside observer's standard, would have been mortifying beyond words.
Two figures, one atop the other, stacked precisely like a man and woman in the act of lovemaking.
Granted, both of them were fully clothed — him in his suit, her in her maid uniform — so anyone could see that nothing of the sort was happening. But when it came to the position itself, it would be no exaggeration to say it differed not one whit from that indecent posture.
"W-wait, Lilith... are you perhaps awa—"
—Smooch.
"Li, Lilith?!"
As if knocking him back down into that humiliating position weren't enough, her legs were now winding around his lower body. A posture that truly could not be distinguished from a man and woman in the act — and Edan found himself paralyzed, helplessly caught between this way and that.
N-no. I have to shake her off, even if I have to force myself—
Left as things were, he was in genuine danger of losing his reason along with his patience. And so, awake or not, Edan steeled himself to pry her away—
"Edan, don't go..."
"..."
But there was no shaking off that pitiful, pleading voice murmuring right beside his ear. And so, abandoning his escape, Edan simply lay wrapped in her arms, quietly enduring his desire.