As she looked up at him and spat out mockingly, sparks flew in his eyes.

“…Master, you say, my lady.”

“How dare you pretend not to kno— Ah!”

Before she could finish speaking, her wrist was seized by a strong force and pulled.

Ioan pushed the staggering woman onto the table.

In an instant, their positions were reversed.

He looked down at her lying on the table and licked his lower lip with his pomegranate-red tongue.

A savage and sensual expression.

‘If it was going to be like this so quickly, why do you keep pretending to be a pathetic nobleman?’

Delphine struggled to free her captured wrists, but it was a futile action in the face of the absolute difference in strength.

Looking down at her like that, he curled his lips in a sneer and murmured.

“Master? This mansion, you, everything has become mine.”

It was a statement implying she should think about who the master was now.

“Then let me ask once more, Lord Pryde.”

Giving up her meaningless resistance and going limp, Delphine spat out as if grinding her words.

“Then why did you marry the daughter of a traitor? It’s because you’re that Ioan, isn’t it.”

“…I believe I told you before, but perhaps my explanation was insufficient.”

The man looked down at her with an unprecedentedly cold face and spoke expressionlessly.

The answer was simple.

“A beautiful woman becomes a man’s pride.”

“…That means, in other words.”

Her voice trembled at the end.

Delphine couldn’t easily distinguish whether this trembling voice was due to shame or anger.

“You married me to make me a trophy?”

Delphine clenched her fists and glared at the man with tear-filled emerald eyes.

“All those medals and the title of hero weren’t enough?”

The man who had been looking down at her with an expressionless face slowly parted his lips.

This time too, the answer was simple.

“…That’s right.”

It was an infinitely dry and indifferent tone.

However, even in this situation, Delphine noticed that the man pressing against her was gradually becoming excited.

In fact, their bodies were so close that she couldn’t help but notice.

“Then I understand even less.”

Delphine stared straight at him and retorted.

“If that’s the case, why haven’t you touched me for nearly two months since our marriage? …Lord Pryde?”

Delphine added “Lord Pryde” at the end, imitating him in an exaggeratedly elegant tone.

But contrary to her confident tone, her cheeks inevitably flushed.

No matter how prideful and fiery her temperament, she was still a lady raised as a count’s daughter.

She had never uttered anything even similar to this with her own mouth before.

Sparks flew in the man’s eyes as he coldly looked down at that sight.

Delphine flinched and instinctively tried to back away, but all that met her back was the hard table.

“Was it so suspicious that I hadn’t touched you out of respect?”

“What I mean is—”

“What you mean.”

The man coldly cut off Delphine’s words.

This too was behavior that hadn’t existed before.

“Is that there’s no reason for me to hold back anymore.”

“Wha—! Mmph.”

She opened her mouth to object, but her voice was cut off midway.

It was because the man covered her lips with his own as if to swallow her whole.

For the first time in her life, another’s lips descended upon hers, and it was only for a moment.

He began to push in roughly without giving even a moment’s pause.

Amidst the flood of bewildering sensations, Delphine suddenly realized that this was the first time this man had kissed her.

He’s serious this time.

He has no intention of stopping midway.

His entire body pressed against her without a gap was warm, no, hot.

‘Ioan. How could you do this to me…?’

She struggled for a moment with the rising feelings of betrayal, anger, and a bit of fear.

Gradually, a strange sensation began to bloom inside Delphine as well.

He would give a very brief respite when she gasped for breath, then push in again as if wanting to crush her.

Was a kiss originally such a rough and barbaric act?

It felt as if he was sucking in her soul along with her breath.

Only after what seemed like an eternity did his lips finally part from hers.

Delphine lay collapsed on the table, panting with a dazed look in her eyes.

Ioan’s gaze as he looked down at her was filled with complex emotions.

It was the eyes of someone who felt victorious, had an enigmatic satisfaction, and had made some kind of decision.

“Haa, haa… Y-you, Ioan… You…”

“Yes. Call my name like that. …But not here.”

The man pressed his lips against her earlobe and murmured lowly.

“In bed.”

A chill.

At those words, a cold regret flowed down Delphine’s nape and into her spine.

Only then did Delphine realize that she had been holding onto the expectation that this man, that is, Ioan, wouldn’t force himself on her.

“You are my saint, my lady.”

If he had been that boy who truly hesitated to even touch the hem of her clothes or step on her shadow…

But three years had passed since then.

The man before her eyes had become somewhat distanced from the Ioan of that time, and more unknowable. That kind of existence.

He picked up Delphine in one swift motion and kicked the door open.

Delphine, overwhelmed with anxiety and anger, struggled and shouted.

“Let go! I said let go!”

The servants who had been in the corridor quickly made way, startled by the unseemly sight of the master and mistress.

“My, my lady. No matter how impatient you are, there’s still a matter of appearances, so please endure a little longer. …Or.”

He was heading towards the stairs leading to the bedchamber when he couldn’t hold back and flung open the door to the first-floor reception room.

Then he roughly laid her down on the sofa of the empty room and spat out.

“Would you prefer here?”

“You madman!”

At last, the harsh words burst out.

Ioan!

Delphine glared at him with blazing eyes.

The man, who had completely thrown off his mask of nobility, met her gaze with a cold look, as if he absolutely wouldn’t let her off this time.

“…I tried to treat you as gentlemanly as possible.”

“This is gentlemanly? Ah, right. This is probably the extent of manners you know how to show, Ioan!”

“But now that I know you’re so desperate to be in my arms, there’s no need to hold back at all. Don’t you agree?”

“Desperate? Don’t make me laugh! Is that all your vulgar eyes can see?”

At the word ‘vulgar’, sparks flew in the man’s eyes once again.
A cold, somehow terribly twisted look.

“I don’t know who you’re thinking of inside of me.”

The man roughly took off his indoor robe and threw it aside.

With her wrists gripped by his brutish hands, her body wedged between thighs thicker than her waist,
Delphine was now in a state where she couldn’t even struggle anymore.

“That bastard is gone now. …The one before your eyes now is your husband, Ioan Pryde.”

“You…!”

His hand mercilessly delved into the folds of her dress.
As Delphine gritted her teeth and was about to spit out even harsher words at him, at that moment—

Knock knock.

Someone hesitantly knocked on the reception room door.

The man openly made an annoyed expression and muttered a curse under his breath.

“Don’t disturb us and leave.”

“Um… I apologize, Master. However…”

Betty.

Delphine was moved to tears at the voice coming from outside the door.
It must be her faithful and brave maid who had gathered the courage to save her.
It was obvious that all the other servants would be too afraid for their lives to dare step forward.

“A guest has arrived. …For you, Master. They say they must see you urgently, but to receive them in the reception room…”

At this message, both Ioan, who had been thoroughly annoyed, and Delphine, who had been relieved, simultaneously showed puzzled expressions.

In the now quiet reception room, the sound of fierce wind shaking the windows was echoing anew.

A guest?

In this weather, when the ‘frenzy’ had begun to rage?

“…Hah.”

As he buried his face in the nape of her neck and let out a deep sigh, Delphine flinched.

But that was only for a moment.

The man rose uncomfortably with a face mixed with irritation and anger.

“I’ll go out. The guest… For now, show them to the dining room.”

The fearless, impudent maid wrapped her arms around Delphine and left the reception room.

Before going to see the guest, Pryde flung open the rattling window to cool his heated body.

As soon as the window opened, a fierce wind mixed with sleet poured madly into the room.

Receiving that swirling, knife-like wind as if it were a self-imposed punishment, he gritted his teeth.

Ioan Pryde, who had come from being the lowest slave in the empire to its most glorious hero.

“…Damn it.”

The weather outside, named ‘frenzy’, seemed to express his own heart.

She had finally seen it.

The scars on his back that he most wanted to erase, yet remained like a brand that could never be removed.

From the start, it was his mistake to have lost his senses so defenselessly.

Who would have thought that an innocent noble young lady would devise such a cute strategy to seduce a man and obtain the truth?

It wasn’t just him who had changed over the past 3 years.

‘That boy and girl from back then are nowhere to be found now.’

Those pure feelings from that time are also gone now.

Pryde realized with a bitter heart.

When her hand had stroked his back, scarred by her father.

And just now in the dining room, when a glimmer of victory flashed in her eyes as she looked at him.

At that moment, several contradictory emotions swept over him simultaneously.