The Prince's Taste - Chapter 2.5
“…This is a problem.”
She could hear him muttering to himself. Cold sweat ran down her back.
“Aaahh, haa… it feels good.”
To make matters worse, a nasal moan suddenly hit her mind like a sledgehammer. Judy Esther’s eyes narrowed, and flashes of an e****c scene played in her head.
“Judy, if you keep doing that, I won’t be able to hold back.”
“Then don’t hold back.”
While human memory is unreliable, it’s unlikely for completely unrelated thoughts to surface. Images of Richard’s naked body—something she had never seen—flashed through her mind, along with lewd acts she had never engaged in.
“…”
She denied it, but her mind had long since betrayed her. The shocking scenes that threatened to overturn all her desperate efforts to avoid the death flag replayed one by one in her head.
The area beneath her eyes trembled. She couldn’t deny that she remembered. Judy Esther’s thoughts drifted back to last night when she had been sipping wine on the terrace. A figure leaning against the terrace door had moved.
“I want to stop this chase-and-run relationship with you.”
A sweet voice had flowed into her ears. Initially, she was captivated by that voice.
“I’m curious how you plan to escape from the terrace.”
At those words, Judy Esther glanced down over the railing. Since they had settled on the terrace with the best view of Adrian’s cityscape, below was a sheer cliff that seemed to drop into nothingness. A chill ran down to her toes, and she instinctively took a step back, only to bump into a man’s body. A pleasant scent wafted into her nostrils. As she turned around, Judy Esther’s half-drunken eyes fell upon the man’s chest muscles, which could not be concealed by his thin silk shirt.
Whatever he was saying had gone in one ear and out the other—her attention was completely stolen by the muscles right in front of her. Before she knew it, her fingers had started exploring his chest.
“You’ve sexually harassed a member of royalty…”
She clapped a hand over her mouth, her pupils trembling uncontrollably. What would happen if she touched the body of royalty without permission? Would they cut off her hands? It was an old story, but there had been an incident where a maid lost her foot for stepping on the king’s concubine’s foot. She carefully tucked both hands into her sleeves.
“I didn’t expect you to be so proactive.”
“It’s just that your chest muscles are a work of art.”
“Is that so?”
“Are other parts like that too? If so, you’re exactly my type.”
“Would you like to check?”
It was a case of “act first, get permission later.” Since Richard had said she could touch him, there was no risk of losing her wrist.
Judy Esther sat up with a dazed expression. The enormity of her blunder left her head spinning. Sitting cross-legged, she crossed her arms and fell into thought. How did people handle these situations in one-night romance stories? While modern and medieval contexts weren’t the same, the dynamics between men and women would likely be similar. She decided to coolly wrap things up.
“After a night of adult fun sparked by the excitement of the festival, it’s virtuous to part ways gracefully.”
“Am I someone you can just toss aside?”
Richard slowly replied.
“I have nothing to say since I can’t remember what happened.”
The man’s gaze suggested he found the situation unappealing. A slight vein bulged above his furrowed brow, indicating he might not fully understand.
Though she was pretending not to know, Judy Esther recalled her own hazy memories from last night, when she had been throwing flirtatious glances at Richard with her bleary eyes. She remembered twisting a pink hair strand around her finger while speaking in a slurred manner. However, the highlight of that night was something else entirely.
She had grabbed Richard’s arm and burst through the terrace door into the banquet hall. Arm in arm, they crossed through a bustling ballroom filled with nobles from across the kingdom. The shocked gazes of young ladies and gentlemen, as well as older nobles, all turned toward her.
She had made some bold claim about “falling in love,” then proceeded to whirl Richard around the ballroom—not once, but several times. She clapped her hands over her mouth as the memories flooded back. No matter how drunk she had been, it was insane.
“Pretending you don’t remember seems like a lie.”
Wait a minute. During her spins in the banquet hall, she seemed to have also run into Countess Ingrid, infamous for her sharp tongue and the woman nicknamed “Princess of Gossip” in Adrian.
“Ingrid… please let that be my welcome.”
The sound of her unique laughter, accompanied by the fluttering of a large fan, echoed in Judy Esther’s mind. This was truly more of a nightmare than a one-night stand.
“Unfortunately, you two did meet.”
“We only exchanged pleasantries, right?”
“No, you had quite the conversation.”
Richard wore an amused expression. This wasn’t just a matter of shutting Richard up. This was already a colossal disaster that had likely reached the ears of both the king and her father, Marquis Emers.
“I must be out of my mind…”
Judy Esther covered her entire face with both hands.
Alcohol was to blame. She had lost her sense of reason at the sight of a man with impressive muscles. But surely this couldn’t all be true. It had to be a dream. The fact that she had confidently pulled him out of the banquet hall while receiving the gazes of the nobles filling the room was absurd.
