Winter Bud - Chapter 81

“Aren’t you sad?”

Thea came up beside Orestes, who was looking out over the broad field. He didn’t turn his head and narrowed his brow. Unlike him, who had a cold father and an irritable mother, Thea grew up receiving an abundance of her father’s love even if she was in a single-father household.

So she wouldn’t understand him, someone who didn’t show any particular reaction to the news of his father’s death.

“Why?”

“Your father died.”

“Everyone dies.”

“Even so….”

Orestes said coldly, “What matters is whether it was a dog’s death or not. Unfortunately, my father’s death became a dog’s death.” [t/n: a pointless death]

Thea looked shocked by that mutter, then soon nodded. Her gaze moved to the field with him. Ten days had passed since he was found in the field. Thea lifted a finger and pointed to one spot in the green field.

“You were found over there.”

“….”

“You know Nanna, right? She found you. She often goes to pick wildflowers. She likes decorating my bedroom and my father’s bedroom with wildflowers.”

Thea smiled faintly. The one who found him as he was dying was her personal maid. A maid who went to the field every morning to pick flowers found him. So if it hadn’t been for that maid, he might’ve died before his father. Becoming the protagonist of a dog’s death…. Maybe he would’ve been mocking himself from the sky. He tried to erase the face of the maid wriggling in his mind.

Thea often brought up her maid. With no brothers or sisters, she said her maid was her closest friend. That she cherished her like a sister. Orestes thought, what kind of person calls some maid a friend?

His mother also took in close cousins, or daughters of vassal families, as personal maids and made them her friends, but she never thought their standing was the same as her own. But Thea’s maid was said to be of a much lower status. Had she said she saved her from being sold to a brothel?

He furrowed his brows. Thinking of a girl being dragged to a brothel by a rough hand, her clothes stripped off by filthy hands, made him feel dirty. She was a woman who couldn’t even properly meet his eyes and turned her head away every time. Was she afraid of men, or just afraid of people? Anyway, a stupid woman like that, a brothel.

Turning that clear and innocent girl into a prostitute? In an instant, he felt dirty.

“That stupid idiot of a girl, a whore. Does she even know men?”

When he crudely twisted his red lips as if sneering, Thea stared at him blankly. Orestes narrowed his brow and whipped his gaze away. Thea, who’d been looking at him, said a meal was prepared in the dining room. Orestes didn’t refuse the hospitality.

Thea moved gracefully, dragging a dress made of luxurious satin. Aldermort’s dining room was wide and splendid, as much as Enroy’s main castle. The tension the space gave was considerable, enough that it wouldn’t have been strange to use it as a ballroom.

Orestes saw the duke seated at the head of the long table. After greeting the Grand Marshal of the East with proper courtesy, he sat across from Thea. He lifted his head and stared past Thea’s shoulder. The girl was there against a wall where almost no light reached.

The girl, who had neatly braided the hair that fell at her ears and decorated it with a ribbon, was wearing a modest cotton chemise dress, unlike Thea. Even so, his gaze went to her more often. He turned his head deliberately and looked at Thea.

When their eyes met, Thea smiled refreshingly. Her delicate features were quite cute. She wasn’t a great beauty, but the way she pulled her small lips into a smile was beautiful like a skylark in the early morning.

The way she folded her eyes and smiled brightly was unpretentious and cheerful, unlike other noble girls. It was a brisk personality that contrasted with her status as the only daughter of a great noble. She wasn’t a beauty that captured someone at a glance, but she was attractive enough.

The East and the North had never been on good terms for generations, but he was in a position where he needed an ally. The more powerful, the better. Everhardt was a house with a foundation comparable to Enroy. The duke, who owned vast territory and a wealthy port, was a man who had built up considerable power, enough to make even the emperor tense.

Not only the empire’s subjects, but even the officials and ministers said he was a man who possessed both wisdom and virtue. So Thea, too…. Beyond the fact that she was his benefactor who saved him, she was a woman with enough qualities to be loved. He lifted his gaze and looked at the girl.

When their eyes met, a small light flickered in her clear green eyes. He didn’t dislike that persistent gaze that clung to him even when he looked away. A brave and bold girl full of curiosity, always wanting to go out into the world. A girl just as noble as him, with a powerful father. There was no reason not to fall in love.

Much more than that lowly maid of hers…. He lifted his glass and swallowed the red wine. As he thought of that skinny woman who surged into his mind for an instant, he raised his gaze again. What should he call it? Sticky and shapeless…. His pulse plunged, and an unpleasant sensation covered him completely. Like he was caught in a trap. A sensation he couldn’t easily escape numbed him.

In that moment, anxiety rose. It was fear born from dread that grotesque greed might make him foolish. He raised his head and, deliberately, smiled at Thea. The meal ended without anything special happening.

But the problem was midnight that day. Even if he closed his eyes, Thea’s maid floated in his mind, like a foreign substance drifting on the surface of water. Every time she cleared the plates, every time she filled the glass. With a doll-like face, she would come close and stretch out her thin hand.

He recalled those white, pitiful fingers and fumbled at his waistband. A strange heat seemed to pool between his thighs. He clenched his lips and groped at his lower body. He blindly shook his long, thick cock. A sensation that felt like it couldn’t be quenched twisted at his throat. Drying up every bit of moisture in his throat….

The unfamiliar sensation wasn’t bad. He thought of the woman in her simple indoor dress. Beneath her loose hair, he saw a glimpse of pale breasts that rose slightly. He wanted to brush that hair aside and press his lips to hers. Strangely. It was the first time he’d felt that way while looking at a woman.

On the battlefield, prostitutes often wandered around. All of them with their breasts half-exposed, spilling foolish laughter while being held in the soldiers’ arms. They were camp-following prostitutes. Sometimes those women would even approach Orestes, giving him coy smiles.

He thought a woman’s breasts were repulsive. Unlike a man’s flat, thick chest, swollen breasts were strange somehow, something hard to look at. And the narrow, damp hole between her thighs, what about that? He had known women, but he had no interest in women.

Thea was the same. The duke’s daughter was lovable, but that was all. If he’d had a younger sister, would it have felt like this?

‘Hoo….’

He let out a long, heavy breath. With his eyes open, he squeezed the hand gripping his cock hard. Then he started rubbing quickly. His lumpy abs tensed, and he felt urgency. He imagined a naked woman.

More precisely, it was naked Nanna. A woman with a shy face, letting her pale, full breasts hang, smiling bashfully, slowly opened the bedroom door and came toward him. Soft, warm breasts touched his chest. He stretched out both arms, pulled her into his embrace, and met her eyes. Nanna’s breasts fit him perfectly. Beyond the ample flesh, he could feel her heart thumping.

With bloodshot eyes, he stared steadily at the woman, then hurriedly found her lips and bit down. Nanna, with her eyes closed, met his lips. As if crumpling her beautiful naked body and holding it to his chest, he held her with strength. As his hand stroked down her delicate back, he roughly seized her rounded buttocks.

Nanna let out a weak moan and tipped her head back. Teasing her with the tip of his tongue, he sucked at her red lips. Nanna’s breath trembled softly, then she folded her eyes as she looked at him. He gently kneaded the woman’s buttocks, then lifted her up.

He couldn’t remember clearly where he’d seen that kind of act. As befitting the heir of a great house, he also received education on how a man takes a woman. How men and women differ, what a woman’s sex looks like. How you push into that place.

When he received that education, it only felt like he was learning biological knowledge, but….

‘Why do you hate me?’

‘I don’t hate you.’

His lips moved on their own. He kissed the woman’s eyelids as she looked up at him with a flushed face. She was lovely. To the point his cock felt like it would burst….