We're Married, After All - Chapter 17
It was a sound.
“In truth, that’s not the only thing I don’t know. I don’t even know how you spend your days. But I never asked, because I didn’t think it was something I needed to know.”
“……”
“But now, my husband has been secretly drugging me with sleeping agents every day, and everyone in the estate seems to know about it except me. Is this also something I don’t need to know? Or is it…”
I paused to catch my breath. Speaking about this, at least, was still difficult, and the tail end of my voice quivered slightly.
“Or is it that you just don’t have anything to say to me?”
Like your brother, who disappeared a week before our wedding.
I swallowed the rest of my words and closed my mouth.
It was only then that Danel looked up at me. I saw the reflection of my face in his eyes, twisted in an unrecognizable expression.
The things only I was kept in the dark about, the time I spent alone, the sleeping agents, even the items filling this room that belonged to me. Is my inability to understand Danel’s thoughts because we know so little about each other? Or is this just how it’s meant to be?
I gripped the hem of my chemise tightly in my hand.
When I think about it, perhaps this is what marriage truly is—a relationship where you have to do so much together with someone you hardly know. In some ways, my long companionship with Petios from childhood might have been the exception rather than the norm.
Yet now, all that time feels meaningless. Despite all the years we spent together, I had no idea what that bastard was thinking in the days leading up to our wedding.
Feigning a calmness I didn’t feel, I opened my mouth to speak.
“Am I the strange one here? Is being stuck in this estate and having children the only thing I’m allowed to do? Do I really have no choice in this matter either? Like with Petios… Like that bastard did to me, am I just supposed to wait until you decide something?”
“Laurea.”
“What? It’s not like you’re hiding something grand. Is there some incredible secret you’re keeping from only me?”
Why did you lace my tea with drugs? Why did you bury your face between my legs and suck on me that night at dawn? Why have you filled that room with so many of my things?
Before I could voice those questions, charged with emotion, Danel grabbed my hand. His touch was searingly warm, but at the same time, a sharp sting coursed through my hand.
Only then did I notice the red crescent-shaped marks left by my nails on my palm. It seemed they had dug into my skin through the thin muslin while I’d been lost in thought.
Danel’s eyebrows twitched upward slightly. Soon, his long fingers brushed over my palm, tracing each crescent indentation as if they were grave injuries that needed delicate care.
Slowly, Danel leaned forward, pressing his face into my hands as if he were crumbling.
“…You know what I’m thinking,” he stammered, his forehead resting against my palm. “You know what kind of thoughts I have… what I want to do…”
Really. What is it you want to do?
I cupped his cheeks with both hands, and he obediently lifted his head to meet my gaze as if following my touch.
Though I had known him for a long time, the man gazing back at me still wore an unfamiliar expression.
If I thought of him not as the Danel Veloce I knew, but as a stranger, the situation wasn’t entirely incomprehensible.
“What is it you want to do?”
Thud.
The light sound of a bedroom slipper hitting the floor broke the silence. Pushing Danel’s shoulders back, I pulled both legs up onto the desk. The thin muslin chemise slipped down, revealing not only my knees but also my thighs. Yet his gaze remained fixed on the pinkish hue of my toes.
Resting my chin on my knees, I asked, “Something like this?”
If this man wasn’t the Danel Veloce I thought I knew—if he wasn’t the boy who had shut himself away in a room to pray and read scriptures since he was twelve—perhaps the answer would be simpler.
What if he had developed a belated interest in a woman’s body and was now trying to escape his desires? That would make sense, wouldn’t it? Setting up a separate room to hoard my belongings, avoiding me whenever lust took hold of him…
It wasn’t uncommon for men who had lived a life of celibacy to experience confusion when confronted with newfound passion. After all, it’s said that the most common reason priests abandon their vows is because of women.
Even if that wasn’t the reason, wouldn’t this still be better than him only touching me after drugging me into unconsciousness?
Whether it was the pitch-black night sky, the sheer chemise, the marigold scent of melted candle wax, or the faint floral fragrance lingering from soaking my feet in perfumed water for so long—I didn’t know what had moved him.
Whatever it was, Danel wrapped his hand around my ankle. With a long sigh, he took my big toe into his mouth and began to roll it with his tongue.
