Kaella grew up loved in an environment of abundant wealth without any lack.

There was nothing she desperately wanted, and because she had so much, she easily gave things up, never acting impulsively or spontaneously. But there are exceptions to everything, and for Kaella, Peon was that exception.

Just once before dying. If not once but twice, she’d be even happier, and if not twice but thrice, she’d be overjoyed.

That’s what he was to her. Someone she’d regret even after death, someone she wanted to hold onto even if it meant pushing aside resentment and grudges for a moment. Perhaps it was the only desire that had persisted since the carefree young days of Her Highness the princess.

“So, how shall I serve you, customer?”

Peon asked, holding Kaella’s waist and kissing her nape. The woman, unable to understand why she had allowed him, just shrugged her shoulders and blushed red.

His insides were burning, and he felt like he might go crazy thinking she might push him away at any moment, but Peon deliberately kissed her cheek more finely to suppress his anxiety.

“I can do much better than before. Tell me, anything.”

Even when he was a mere human he had been incredible, but now Peon, who knew every single point of her nerves and pleasure, wasn’t just making empty promises.

The most beautiful man Kaella knew smiled at her. Every time he smiled, her back tingled and her heart tightened.

It was scary, yet it was a smile that made her want to throw herself into it and fall. Anyone, man or woman, who saw that smile would probably lie down before him.

“…How much do you want me?”

Peon laughed at her tiny voice.

“Touch me.”

All the clothes he had been wearing fell off without even being touched, as if melting like thin sugar candy.

Without any fabric blocking in between, a warmth bordering on heat reached Kaella. Instead of answering, he faced her with that heat fully contained.

“If you don’t like my body, I can change it all.”

Though not as much as before, Kaella still had many things she was shy about. Peon took her hesitating hand and placed it on himself.

Even when told to touch, she couldn’t move a finger, so he had to guide her himself. Just her small hand touching made him hot and wild beyond control. His heartbeat quickened, and the heat rose to his head.

“How should I change?”

Was it the bone structure that was the problem, or was it how he looked? He could change anything to Kaella’s taste. After all, he was just wearing a human shell and mimicking human behavior, so what did this body matter?

He covered her hand with his. Kaella’s face reddened at the changing sensation under her hand. How cute.

“Don’t you like this?”

“Ah, doesn’t it hurt?”

“You’d have to scratch or bite to hurt me. Your grip is too weak.”

Peon kept kissing Kaella, who couldn’t move as he manipulated her captured hand, while narrowing his shoulders.

“Why aren’t you saying anything, Kaella? You bought me, so you should enjoy it.”

His eyes were already red with excitement. Even the veins in his neck were standing out, almost scary to look at.

“That day too…”

As she spoke softly, he smiled and waited for her to finish. There was plenty to do while waiting.

“Were you like this?”

“That day?”

“Our wedding day.”

“Ah.”

He let out a pleased sigh.

“I struggled to calm down and hold back.”

He put Kaella to sleep, and alone he berated himself over and over, soaked in all sorts of guilt and forbidden desires.

“Even though you were in pain, I was so aroused it felt beastly, so I tried not to show it… Did you notice?”

She couldn’t forget that strange atmosphere of that day. The escaping moans were odd, and Peon’s stiffness was strange too.

The skin that felt burning hot at the slightest touch, and his eyes that were even hotter than that – beyond embarrassment and shyness, she was struck with a sense of crisis that if it went any deeper, something terrible would happen.

“Hmm?”

Calling softly, he tightly grasped her warm, small hand. Haa, their breaths mingled. Kaella gripped tightly as he did.

His purple eyes rolled back.

“Yes. I didn’t think I was the only one feeling that way.”

At her bold words, Peon looked at her as if enchanted, as if in ecstasy. Only now could Kaella finally speak of what she had felt then.

“So you knew.”

He lifted Kaella’s hand again and licked her small palm.

“Then what about now?”

Peon, even more languid now, sighed contentedly and smiled slightly.

“Is it the same now?”

Her heat was rising to match Peon’s temperature. He who had raced ahead first, now slowed down a beat to bury his face in Kaella’s narrow shoulder, calming in her soft hands while she heaved her small chest and gasped for breath.

Just touching you makes me sick.

Some words, no matter how hard you try to forget, just won’t leave your mind. Now it seemed Peon wasn’t sickened by her.

Feeling defiant, and also curious if that ‘sickening’ remark was related to a spell, Kaella had provoked Peon and now tightly hugged his broad shoulders. While mocking herself for being relieved he wasn’t sickened, she couldn’t let go of him.

“Kaella.”

He called her name as if it were some secret pet name between lovers.

The huge man who seemed to be languidly nestled against her, but was actually supporting all of her weight, was a massive ball of fire. Though he had barely managed to calm down once, this fire would eventually consume her too.

“You asked how much I want you?”

His voice was rough. Kaella felt like everything that shouldn’t melt was melting away in his embrace. Her clothes, her brain, her thoughts, all disappeared without a trace.

“Look. I have to use every method I can to hold back so I don’t hurt you.”

Now that she had given permission, he finally had the chance to speak. If there was a chance, he absolutely couldn’t miss it.

“For days on end, all day long, I want to do just this with you alone.”

He hugged Kaella, gauging her weight and volume, then sighed slightly.

“If only you would become healthier.”

Would that be possible even if she became healthier? Peon already didn’t need to be any healthier to be capable. But Kaella, an ordinary, even frail human, was not.

“We can’t do that even if I get healthier.”

Kaella shook her head with wide eyes.

“Oh? You have room for other thoughts?”

Peon’s eyes narrowed. Huh? Kaella hunched her shoulders and covered her mouth with her hand.

“My mistake. Even if I’m cheap, I should do my best so that Your Highness might remember me someday.”

“W-wait, ah, suddenly…!”

Suddenly it’s too fast. He kissed her slender wrist as if worshipping it, leaving red marks.

If it speeds up, she loses her reason and gets swept away. No, she was already being swept away.

What was that first night like? On the night she stole before dying, he was hot, clumsy, and frantic. After returning, he was extremely careful yet still clumsy, but became completely skilled in just a few nights. It was incomparable to then.

“Mm, Kaella.”

“Stop…!”

“Mm, okay. I like it too.”

Kaella tried to shout that that’s not what she meant. But her voice wouldn’t come out, and she quickly forgot she had even tried to say such a thing.

“I like it.”

For the first time in a long while, bright red nail marks appeared on his forearm. The corners of the excited man’s mouth turned up in satisfaction. The more his purple eyes flashed with ecstasy, the more the solid defenses in her heated blue eyes crumbled, filling with passionate tears.

*

The faint light of dawn filled the room still full of heat. Peon shielded Kaella’s eyes from the light.

She had cried for a long time, tormented by him, before collapsing exhausted into sleep. He gently touched her cooled eyelids.

Confessing love through sharing a bed was mean, vile, and utterly insufficient. It wasn’t just that he liked her – he obsessed over Kaella, yearned for her, held her deep in his soul to a degree that even saying he loved her wasn’t enough.

“Kaella.”

She who had been put into such a deep sleep that even nightmares couldn’t reach her didn’t stir at all.

“Why did you buy me?”

He didn’t expect that the delicately raised princess would readily accept when he deliberately said something shocking.

No, she must have known he did it on purpose and countered him. Even so, she should have known that if she showed even the slightest sign of discomfort, he would immediately back off, so why did she go all the way?

Though he chose madness, unable to let go despite his anxiety, he wasn’t stupid enough to be satisfied with blindly clinging to her. Anxiety always gnawed at him, never leaving.

Someday you’ll abandon me.

Someday you’ll abandon me and die.

Someday you’ll abandon me, die, and never open your eyes again.

Surely, Kaella, you will do that.

“Why?”

So when she reached out her hand, Peon felt both joy and terror.

It seemed like people who had settled everything always became briefly kind at the very end, like a briefly shining signal of death, and that frightened him. At the same time, the vain hope that hurt him most raised its head and whispered a wicked curse.

Maybe.

“Was I of any use?”

The poisonous curse that maybe she had opened her heart a little more.

“Did you like it?”

If she liked it, he would be glad too. He wanted to be some useful object for her.

An object not easily discarded because it’s needed, because there’s a use for it. If possible, something fun enough to make her want to put off dying for a day or two to play with more – that would make him so happy.

So for now, his goal was to at least be a bedmate. How grand it was to be able to occasionally satisfy her desires, give her pleasure, and make her forget the tears and wounds filling her insides, even if just for a moment.

The knight who had sworn to walk only the righteous path was now gone. The knight who had vowed not to be shaken by temptation or deceived by lies was destroyed for violating his oath.

So forget about such oaths, forget about being a knight – he’d be happy to even be an occasional bedmate she thought of. Just that would be enough.

He knew. It was utterly pathetic.

When Kaella fell asleep, the nights he spent alone were always filled with terror, anxiety, and pain.

*

It was morning. Clearly morning. A bright summer morning at that.

Even the four-poster bed curtains had long since changed to the transparent white light of summer. And those transparent bed curtains were inadequate to hide the vigorously moving solid body.

“Stop…”

The man she had readily bought last night tormented her persistently in the morning too. Kaella, who had been crying with her ears, cheeks, and eyes all red, couldn’t endure and covered her eyes with weak hands. Peon immediately stopped all his actions.

“I told you not to say such things unless you really mean it. Should I really stop?”

At first, it was truly sincere.

She had said to stop because the sensations washing over her last night were too frightening, because she felt like something might really happen, but when Peon immediately separated his body, Kaella opened her eyes wide. That wasn’t it.

He who had been very affectionate at night smiled and pulled Kaella back. But this morning, Peon was not so affectionate.

She looked at him unknowingly with eyes that said that wasn’t it. Her eyes, tormented since morning, were full of sorrow.

“You have to speak honestly, Kaella. Do you really want me to stop?”

Though Peon was no less excited, Kaella was sorrowful and impatient, about to cry.

“Th-that’s not, it…”

“Then what is it?”

The moment Peon asked with his lips slightly curved, Kaella realized he would never yield. She knew that expression.

“You bought me. You should order me. Come on, say it.”

For Peon to say such things while his neck veins were bulging and his eyes were overflowing with heat made Kaella feel too wronged, annoyed, and embarrassed. Above all, she felt urgent and desperate.

“Oppa, you’re really mean…”

It was a thoughtless outburst. Words she used to say back then, to him when he wore the expression of her ‘oppa’. Kaella froze as she watched Peon laugh soundlessly.

“You really are playing with me.”

Even when dying to hear one honest answer, you still drive people crazy. He laughed and resumed what he had stopped.

He erased the words ‘marital duty’ and ‘heir’ from this dutiful duchess’s mind.

He erased all the common noble words that could coldly define this act, and instilled only heat and pleasure. He clearly saw her calm eyes as she returned to reality upon waking.