Chapter 75 (Rated 18)
“Definitely not my brother, right?”
As soon as Noah finished speaking, Adele pushed him hard, and he gently backed away. He grabbed the hand that was holding his shoulder.
“So bashful.”
Smooch.
He kissed the pale back of her hand and looked at Adele with eyes full of desire. “It’s alright, you are human too.”
“I… I don’t—”
“It isn’t something unusual. There’s no need to be embarrassed in front of me.”
He licked her pale fingers, wanting to calm her fiercely beating heart with his crafty words. But Adele just felt a heavy sensation on her chest and became restless.
“I saw you masturbat!ng alone, and the idea that you were pleasuring yourself a few feet away from me almost drove me insane” He paused and stared at her deeply, “While staring at you, I was doing the exact same thing you were doing.”
“…”
“Had I known that you’d like it, I would’ve helped you that time. Am I right, sister-in-law?” He drawled the last few words. When she heard it, it was filled with so much sexual insinuation and irony.
Sister-in-law…
Adele was instantly mired in guilt. She couldn’t stop her ex-husband’s face from coming to her mind. Her complexion paled and she pushed her current husband away, who was watching her movements.
Noah didn’t budge. He grabbed Adele’s thin wrist and questioned, “Did my brother cross your mind?”
“Let go of me!”
Noah’s face became void of expression, “I remember you telling me before that you aren’t a toy.”
He grabbed Adele’s chin and abruptly placed a brutal kiss on her lips. She struggled and tried to get away from him, but to no avail. Their lips met a few times before he stopped.
“I should be the one saying that.”
Adele felt confused.
“Acting like you want me, then discarding me once I’ve served my purpose?” There was an unbearable resentment plastered on his handsome face. Adele couldn’t say anything in response to his pained expression.
“If I see you and if you even just slightly held out your hand, I would run to you immediately like a rabid dog. But once I’m near, you would’ve already fled far away.”
“…”
“Do you really hate me that much?”
“I—”
“No, don’t answer that.”
Noah could be assured of everything in his life, but the one thing he didn’t want to be assured of, was her loathing of him.
“I don’t—mmph!”
Adele’s words were interrupted by Noah’s punishing lips. This aggressive, tenacious, and somewhat desperate kiss persisted for a long time until Adele almost felt numb, as if the root of her tongue would be detached if they continued any further.
Noah parted his lips for a moment and loosened his tie. He spoke, “From now on, don’t say anything else.”
He could hear Adele’s heavy gasps and tucked a stray hair behind her ear, “Just let out those little moans I like to hear. They make me feel less miserable.”
At the end of his grim words, the kiss ensued.
That time, more than any other night, that was the kiss that made the two of them breathlessly intoxicated.
***
At the Imperial Palace, inside an office.
“Let me take a short guess on what you all were thinking about when you made your way here.”
At the head of the table, the emperor sat with his chin raised, levelling a gaze at the ruling and neutral party officials that were neatly seated in a row.
Rayence uttered unhappily, “To call busy people to change a trivial law, you might criticize that it’s so hard to serve this Emperor. I know many of you harbor similar thoughts.”
“Your Majesty, how could we—”
“Is it not?” he immediately cut of their words, he wasn’t in the mood for their excuses and irksome flattery.
Honestly, what the emperor said was correct. There were a lot of busy people that were called upon in this room. In addition, the law wasn’t observed by these nobles, and the people didn’t really care about this particular law.
However, the tension between the emperor who had recently proposed to change this law, and Duke Maktus who perpetually opposed the emperor, arose to become a headache.
Rumors had even circulated that the emperor loved the duchess and wanted to steal her away.
Seeing the reaction of his subordinates who couldn’t say a thing in defense, the emperor gave a signal to his aide.
The servants came and placed papers in front of all the seated subordinates. Their eyes widened when they saw the document bearing the Emperor’s Seal, especially the contents written within.
“Y-your Majesty! This is…!”
“Speak, Count Sebastian.”
“Your Majesty! If the law changes as written here, doesn’t that mean all our knights would become the Armed Forces?”
In Astria, among the nobles, there were those who had knights or enlisted men.
Based on what is written on the paper in front of them, all enlisted soldiers will become the emperor’s national army for invasion and war against foreign nations. In other words, the aristocrats who had knighted men will become toothless tigers.
The emperor drank his tea and calmly reasoned out, “Wars are frequently happening these days, so isn’t it better to do it like this? Besides, I would only be borrowing them.”
‘Borrowing’, my ass! This was as good as giving them away for free!
Their hearts almost bled at the amount of money and effort they each spent on training those men, thinking it would end up benefitting someone else instead.