In the end, Herdin lost his reason and began to move Blair. Blair bit her lip as her vision blurred.
Gradually, this strange yet familiar act awakened sensations that her body had forgotten, but her subconscious remembered.
Blair could barely breathe from the dizzying sensation. Herdin furrowed his brow as he watched her.
"Breathe, Blair."
His rough voice, as if scraping his Adam's apple, resonated in Blair's ear. However, contrary to his concerned words, he became even more intense.
In her fading consciousness, Blair instinctively embraced him. Even knowing that he was the demon tormenting her right now, she had no choice but to hold onto him.
Because in this moment, only he and she existed in this world.
Finally reaching his peak, Herdin cooled his body's heat while appreciating the woman sprawled in his arms.
The woman who had fully accepted him was beautiful.
Objectively, it was a pretty face, and he had no disagreement with that fact, but it hadn't particularly moved him before.
However, at this moment, that fact suddenly struck him anew.
Her snow-white appearance as if sculpted from moonlight, her violet eyes brimming with moisture, her lips reddened from being bitten so much, even her voice calling his name with a whimper - everything was lovely.
...truly, damnably so.
Enough to make him forget for a moment whose daughter she was.
He felt revulsion at his own state. Yet his thirst for this woman remained unquenched. He couldn't stop.
This emotion is just a momentary desire.
Once I hold her until dawn breaks, surely this nonsensical thought will cease. Like snow melting away on this night.
With such thoughts, Herdin embraced her again.
"...Herdin?"
Blair, who had been blinking her dazed eyes, belatedly grasped the situation and struggled, but it was futile.
Herdin felt a strange sense of satisfaction at the sight of the woman clinging to him again.
His solid and massive body became a prison confining her, devouring her like a starved beast.
Throughout the long winter night, without rest.
Buried in that bottomless, dizzying mire of pleasure, Blair repeatedly reminded herself of only one thought.
Don't forget, Blair.
He doesn't love you.
* * *
"Mmm..."
Feeling sunlight flickering on her eyelids, Blair lifted her heavy eyelids.
As her blurry vision cleared, she saw the familiar yet unfamiliar scene of the room.
It was the room of the Duchess of Delmark where she had stayed before returning to the past.
For a moment, seeing that scenery, she almost mistook it for a dream of returning to the past, but realizing that the child's dolls and belongings that had always been placed around the room were gone made it feel real.
Moreover, the dull ache throbbing throughout her body also proved that last night, her second first night with him, was not a dream.
'Even if the memories remain, the body has returned to the past, so I suppose it's natural.'
Like when she had spent her first night with him, no, even more than then, her body felt heavy and painful.
Even when she dozed off briefly, exhausted from the merciless, dizzying pleasure, Herdin didn't let her go. He acted as if she had entrusted something to him.
Blair's last memory, after repeatedly falling asleep and waking up as if fainting several times, was of his broad back moving away as he left her sleeping exhaustedly in the dim dawn light.
It was only upon seeing that back that Blair realized.
'So this was your true heart.'
How desperate he had been in her past life, staying by her side until morning, trying to uncover the truth from her.
And how naive I was to believe it.
The truth of his heart, which she finally faced after miraculously returning to the past, was colder and more bitter than she had thought.
But it was rather a relief. She wouldn't have to feel guilty about using him for her own purposes now.
Calmly putting away her emotions, Blair forced her heavily sinking body to rise and pulled the bell rope.
Search "child" at redcatty [.] com to read ahead up to chap 170.