The Terminally-Ill Duke Clings to Me Every Night - Chapter 51

‘Take responsibility. For what on earth?’

Leah looked at the man with trembling eyes. His red eyes that were gazing at her were engulfed in a huge passion.

She gulped as an inexplicable tension gripped her heart. Just from his gaze alone, a deep thirst came over her as if her whole body would go dry.

“Duke, please calm down first and sit down to talk…”

However, Leah’s words never finished. Because before she could finish speaking, the duke, who had been gradually approaching, swallowed her lips.

“!!!!”

Leah’s mind went blank at the soft sensation that rushed in and divided her mouth, and the hands that intertwined each of her fingers to tie her up so she couldn’t escape.

It was an aggressive kiss that seemed to devour all of her.

As the intensity of the kiss deepened, Leah panted as if it was too much for her.

“Hah… ha.”

When their lips parted, a thin silver thread connected them. Leah felt as if she was dreamily intoxicated by the heat Akkia was emitting with his whole body.

Looking up at him with half-dazed eyes, Akkia reached out and brushed Leah’s tangled long hair.

He must have tried to brush her hair. But every time his burning touch reached her, Leah flinched.

Before she knew it, all her senses were on edge toward Akkia.

“Leah.”

As if stimulated by her appearance, he called out to Leah in a heavily suppressed voice.

Leah’s mind went hazy at the sweet voice that rang out as if tickling her ears.

His lips gradually slid down. From her jawline to her neck, and then to her collarbone. Very slowly, his lips brushed down.

Every time Akkia swallowed deeply, Leah couldn’t come to her senses. She was just soaked in the unfamiliar pleasure he was giving her.

“If you don’t like it…”

He looked at Leah with eyes asking for permission, as if he would stop if she said she didn’t like it.

‘Don’t like it? Not at all…’

Far from disliking it, her body was heating up.

To the point of making all the cells in her body clamor like this, he was asking if she disliked it after making her so anxious.

‘After making it impossible to refuse.’

Her eyelashes trembled at the man’s words.

She too might have gotten intoxicated by the side effects of the drug. Every time the man’s touch reached her, her body twisted with a dizzying thrill.

‘I also… this man…’

Leah felt the thirst she had been holding back boil up all over her body. Reason told her to stop here, but she couldn’t stop at all.

Leah slowly shook her head. Then she slowly reached out and pulled Akkia’s neck.

‘I want him.’

Softly, with the meaning of permission.

For a very brief moment, Akkia’s eyes seemed to deepen at Leah’s pulling.

“I don’t dislike it. I… mmph.”

As if that was the signal, Akkia crashed his lips against Leah’s again. The buttons on the front of Leah’s dress began to come undone one by one, and the garment fell off with a thud.

Before long, bare skin touched each other without a thread. The hot heat was felt directly through the skin, but it wasn’t unpleasant.

Leah’s body also heated up little by little from the heat he was emitting. Then again, a deep and thick kiss continued.

The duke embraced her as if he couldn’t miss even Leah’s small breaths.

Akkia slowly and deeply penetrated into Leah.

[This is the timeline separator]

In the early dawn when the sun had not yet risen. In the room where a sense of silence lingered, Akkia, who had opened his eyes, sat up.

It seemed he had fallen asleep without knowing when he had fallen asleep.

Akkia stared intently at Leah, who was still sleeping and breathing heavily. Her red hair, like a burning flame, was scattered on the white bedding.

“…I didn’t intend for this to happen.”

He muttered quietly and wrapped his fingers around her red hair. Even when he got used to it, it was a mysterious hair color every time he saw it.

It was not uncommon for people in the empire to have red hair. But they were usually murky, mixed with other colors.

This was the first time he had seen someone with such vivid red hair.

‘But somehow it feels like I’ve seen it somewhere before…’

Akkia, who had been fiddling with Leah’s hair, let out a chuckle.

‘That can’t be.’

He quietly shook his head as if he had thought something absurd.

What on earth was a woman like a newborn chick to him. To ruin the long-term plan he had been preparing for over a decade in an instant.

Even he himself thought it was ridiculous, and the corners of Akkia’s mouth twisted.

Illay must have noticed that he had been taking the Porarium poison. That’s why he deliberately made him drink the tea with the Haesali herb.

Illay probably believed that he had died of cardiac arrest after drinking that tea. But in fact, Akkia had taken a pre-prepared drug that stopped his heart.

A drug that stops the heart for about a week.

If Leah’s new drug hadn’t woken him up early, everything would have gone according to plan.

[Your Grace, you must leave now. If we delay any longer, there is a possibility that it will be discovered that you are alive. Don’t you know?]

Because Akkia woke up earlier than planned, all the plans went awry. Even with Rikel’s urging that he had to leave the capital immediately, Akkia couldn’t take a step.

If he left like this, Leah’s execution would proceed as scheduled.

If it were his original self, he wouldn’t have cared about the pharmacist’s life either way.

‘I couldn’t just leave.’

Akkia stroked the cheek of Leah, who was sleeping soundly.

Why he couldn’t leave. What had caught his ankles.

Akkia let out a bitter smile as if he knew the answer.

‘I’ve gone completely crazy. To think this woman was important enough to abandon my long-cherished desire.’

He turned his head and looked around. The disheveled bedding on the bed seemed to fully capture the intense events of last night.

The heat that had been burning hot reached its peak as he started to put his flesh against Leah’s and then slowly subsided.

A drug that raises the energy of the body to the point of boiling and even makes that place heat up.

‘It’s not just a side effect…’

Yes, it wasn’t simply because of the side effects that he embraced Leah.

For the sake of perfect success, the duke and Rikel did not inform Leah of their plan.

‘But to think she would try so hard to save me.’

Honestly speaking, the duke thought Leah would run away if she heard the news that he had died. But Leah struggled to save him.

She even conducted clinical trials on her own body to test the side effects.

When the duke she served died, she should have sought her own way to survive and run away, but Leah did not do that.

As if her calling was only to revive Akkia, she never left his side as he lay collapsed.

‘Is it a good sense of responsibility? Or is it foolishness?’

Rikel had risked his life to smuggle the comatose Akkia out of the imperial palace. And on that day, Akkia, the only prince and duke of the Croatea Empire, died.

Now he just had to live as the head of the Magnolia Guild and wait for the right time. But when he tried to leave like that, he was concerned about Leah, who would be imprisoned and die in vain.

In that Duke, whose humanity had withered away and was full of coldness and hostility, Leah was the only human-like person.

So, despite Rikel’s opposition, he turned his steps toward the execution ground instead of leaving the capital.

Yes, it was impulsive.

In his life, where everything was thoroughly calculated, saving Leah was a kind of adventure.

Although she was like a variable that had entered his life at some point, he thought it wasn’t bad when he saw the sleeping Leah.

Akkia, who had been staring at Leah, muttered quietly.

“You don’t know how much I gave up just to save you.”

He gently stroked the cheek of Leah, who gave no answer. What he gave up was the plan he had been preparing for several years.

“Leah.”

He quietly recited to her, who was in a deep sleep and couldn’t even hear his words.

Like his cousin who had cut off his own hands and feet, and took away what was most precious to him to take that position.

Akkia would rise to the highest position in Croatea. Even if it meant being covered in blood from head to toe.

“I will become the emperor.”

He would take everything back.

Akkia lifted the hand that was buried in Leah’s hair. Leah’s bright red hair spilling out between his fingers. It was as if red blood was flowing down.

“The plan has gone awry, but I have no choice but to start over from the beginning.”

The main plan had been disrupted, but instead, Akkia had gained this woman. Even though he had vowed never to create something precious again.

“I clearly gave you a chance.”

A chance to run away from me.

While staying together at the mansion, he had warned Leah countless times not to approach him.

But Leah lightly crossed the line he had drawn. Now that Leah had entered his life like this, Akkia knew he had no way to avoid it anymore.

“You came in on your own feet.”

The beginning of all this might be the new drug Leah made.

But Akkia sensed that now he wouldn’t be able to let her go.

Because just being together like this made all his nerves stand on end.

“I absolutely won’t lose you this time.”

Anything. So.

“You just need to stay by my side like this.”

Just as you have been until now. Stay by my side, Leah. If you continue to stay by my side like this, I will give you everything you want in this hand of mine.

Akkia’s eyes, whispering like that, shimmered thickly.

In his red eyes entangled with desire and greed, the possessiveness that had been quietly sleeping shone.