“Let’s do it one more time.”

I wondered what he would say besides ‘You’re fearless’.

‘I don’t like that. It’s not a good line to remember for a first kiss.’

Even though we had already shared our bodies several times as husband and wife, a maiden-like feeling that couldn’t let go of romance raised its head.

Clodel cupped his face with both hands.

Then the man’s head came down towards her, as if daring her to try.

Chu.

A small, cute sound passed between their lips as they lightly touched and parted.

Though their lips had barely brushed, as if both had been soaked to the top of their heads and then not, the sensation of sticking and peeling off added to the lingering feeling, like eating an unripe cherry.

It was then that Kaian, who had been watching her actions, moved.

“Ah.”

He supported Clodel’s bottom with his arms in the water while gripping the back of her neck with his other hand.

“A kiss. That’s not how you do it.”

“What? That…”

Kaian roughly pressed his lips against hers and invaded the hidden depths behind her lips.

The short question ‘What?’ that had contained doubts about whether there was a proper way to kiss, melted away in her mouth amidst the chaotic movements.

“…”

Clodel shared breaths with Kaian, held tightly in his arms.

Shared?

It would be more accurate to say they were stolen.

The lukewarm lake water that had been refreshingly enveloping their bodies until just moments ago now heated up with their passion, pooling warmly between their chests.

“Haa. Haa.”

When her lips were finally released from their violent conqueror, Clodel leaned her head weakly on his shoulder, gasping for breath.

Holding her, Kaian moved relentlessly through the water towards the shore.

As their bodies that had been floating in the water for so long were pushed onto land, they sagged with the pull of gravity and a chill immediately set in.

Clodel shivered, her shoulders hunched and her lips trembling.

But soon it was alright.

As if a monster had emerged from the lake.

The man coming out of the water was agile and fast.

His huge, solid body instantly pressed down on the small woman’s body.

As the chill evaporated from her body, another sensation enveloped her like a whirlwind.

Kaian had felt the urge to kiss Clodel for quite some time.

After their wedding night and several nights that followed, Kaian had not kissed Clodel.

He had never been with a woman before.

Before the previous Duke of Temnes died, he had heard that Queen Silvia had asked about his marriage to Princess Bianca.

The siblings with golden hair and blue eyes, looking exactly like copies of the queen.

Having grown up together more like real siblings than cousins, the thought of marrying Bianca immediately struck him as incestuous.

Cousin marriages were quite common in the Kingdom of Oberon.

He knew intellectually that in other countries even uncles and nieces married, but the idea of becoming husband and wife with Bianca filled him with an overwhelming sense of revulsion.

At that time, Kaian firmly expressed his wish to forget about the talk of marriage to Bianca.

The Temnes had traditionally raised their heirs ascetically, and as far as Kaian knew, his father had no women other than his mother.

Of course, there were limits to what a child could know about their parents’ private lives.

And he couldn’t know now if his father had secretly kept a woman without his mother knowing.

The strong conviction that there were probably no extramarital affairs came from the fact that the previous Duke of Temnes was not one to speak idly.

He wasn’t the type to preach to his son about the misfortunes that a lord’s depravity would bring while secretly indulging himself.

Kaian respected that about him and considered it something to emulate.

As a result, he had never been with a woman, and occasionally on the battlefield, after a round of combat, he would overhear men talking crudely like ruffians when drunk.

‘Heh. Last night that wench just thrust her lips at me.’

‘It was so good.’

‘Haha! She was just dying for it, I tell you.’

He wondered why they made such a big deal about stealing a kiss from a prostitute, but there was a key point to their stories.

According to them, the one thing that women who sell their nights never allow is their lips.

They say kisses are only for those you share your heart with.

After hearing that, Kaian thought the guy who first told the story probably never got permission to kiss a woman.

Women were delicate and difficult beings.

His mother, his aunt Queen Silvia, and even his younger cousin Princess Bianca were like that.

He thought there was no way a guy who acted so crudely could get something that women only give to those they connect with emotionally.

He understood it as just men who swing bloody swords during the day boasting as if they’d obtained a unicorn’s horn.

Nevertheless, the notion that women only allow kisses to those they connect with emotionally seemed credible.

It felt true, like the rumors he’d heard, as he watched Clodel gritting her teeth and keeping her mouth tightly shut throughout their wedding night.

As if showing her will to allow her body but not her heart.

Kissing a woman who had her eyes tightly closed with a disgusted face seemed impossible in that atmosphere.

Clodel’s lips, which had regained color after recovering from hersal, fluttered around his eyes like flower petals carried on the wind, sometimes like a living butterfly, but Kaian couldn’t easily reach out.

He had already been rejected, more or less.

Because Clodel had never wanted him, not even once.

‘Can I kiss you?’

It was Clodel who approached him first.

Her touch on his cheek, as if asking for permission.

And the woman in his arms, looking up at his face, seemed as if she might have some feelings for Kaian.

As if he might mean something to her.

He knows that can’t be true.

Clodel of Bermonte was forcibly married to Kaian of Temnes by royal decree.

Probably the only thing she liked in Rowen was the cold gravestone lying in the underground crypt of the castle.

Clodel didn’t come to Rowen to marry him.

She was a woman who came here intending to die.

Kaian, who had been overthinking about taking such a person as his wife, looked foolish.

He had been so angry at the woman trying to escape this place by dying without his permission.

That’s why he had saved her.

To firmly teach the woman trying to die recklessly in his domain as the Lord of Rowen and Duke of Temnes that nothing in this world happens against his will.

“Please… a little slower…”

A faint moan flowed along her lips, touched his cheek, and brushed past his ear.

The baskets containing food that Clodel had prepared for him were pushed aside and toppled over, and the flowers of the delicately made wreath were scattered and crushed under their movements.

‘Why did I offer to teach her to swim?’

Watching the woman lying on the water, Kaian’s throat burned.

Her red hair, shimmering on the blue sky reflected on the water’s surface, looked like a mystical halo.

Sunlight gently fell on her white skin, moist with water.

Beneath the wet clothes swaying with the flow of water, the body that Kaian had once coveted enough to trade ten carriages for was tantalizingly visible.

Seeing this, Kaian felt parched while submerged in the vast water.

He felt that what he had felt watching the sleeping woman night after night had been merely a prelude to drawing him to this test.

The golden eyes of the awake woman were so beautiful.

Kaian forgot his promise to hold Clodel and not play tricks, and let go of his hands.

Because he felt the urge to touch those eyes.

But the woman who fell into the water didn’t expect that.

‘Li-liar. You said you wouldn’t play tricks.’

The moment she threw a tantrum and hit Kaian’s chest with her fist, too small to be a threat.

His heart ached.

Every time Clodel’s tiny fist pounded on his chest, something touched his heart.

A kiss was permission and acknowledgment.

Did her initiating a kiss mean that she at least accepted him as her husband?

But this was not the time to consider such things.

“Your Grace. Hic.”

The wet clothes couldn’t hinder his touching of Clodel.

When kisses were added to his provocative actions, the movements became incomparably more sensual than before.

Who knew that what was used for eating and talking could be such a sensitive place.

Kaian explored Clodel’s lips.

However, the more he took what he had been yearning for, the more he felt like he was losing his soul to the woman with each kiss.

‘Father. I followed your teachings to avoid corruption as the Lord of Temnes.’

He had never done anything shameful as an heir, nor had he ever wanted to escape the heavy responsibility placed upon him.

Why hadn’t he been told that he could have his heart stolen like this by the existence of a wife?

That he could gradually assign meaning and become obsessed with the first woman he had been intimate with.

Instead of just stopping at the teaching not to fool around carelessly and complicate the family lineage, he should have also been taught how to suppress the uncontrollable greed for the woman he took as his wife.

Kaian stopped caressing Clodel greedily and separated his body from hers.

It wasn’t for self-control, but for what came next.

Clodel, with her eyes slightly open, had redness all around her eyes and lips that had been thoroughly rubbed.

Realizing that he was at the end of her gaze, Kaian became even more urgent.

When he tried to pull down her wet, clinging clothes, Clodel was shocked.

“No. Your Grace.”

“No one comes here.”

He had made sure no one would dare come to the back garden while they spent time together.

To the burning Kaian, Clodel shook her head, shivering as if cold.

“That’s… impossible. Absolutely not.”

Seeing reason returning to the woman’s dreamy eyes, Kaian kissed her again.

“Hng.”

Her thin voice was pleasant to hear.

The sound made by the heated woman was like plucking the finest string of a harp.

“Your Grace. Please stop.”

But as it seemed he wouldn’t easily back down, the woman laid on the flower bed kept trying to check him.

“Clodel.”

When he called her name, the woman’s eyes, bright as the midday sun, widened.

“You call my name too.”

Her fists that had been pushing against Kaian’s shoulders slowly loosened and crept up behind his neck as if to embrace him.

“…Kaian.”

The man who had granted permission for his name roughly dove into the gap opened by her calling him.