Duke of the Beast and the Vicarious Bride - Chapter 91

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※ This work contains depictions of coercive relationships, explicit language, and other graphic content. Reader discretion is advised.

Yet when she had actually drawn the bath and brought Caligo before the tub, Fiona belatedly felt a certain difficulty.

‘I must remove all his clothing…’

It was absurd to feel modest between them when he was already half-undressed and they had done everything there was to do, but still, the embarrassment could not be helped.

“Mm, you can undress yourself, can you not?”

Before Fiona’s words had even finished, Caligo swiftly discarded his trousers. His manner suggested an eagerness to demonstrate immediately that he could.

However, as quickly as his eagerness, Fiona turned her head away, thankfully seeing nothing.

Taking care not to let her gaze drift toward his lower half, Fiona hurriedly pushed Caligo’s back and guided him into the water.

“When you immerse yourself in warm water, you will feel better. Here, you need not fetch heated water—it pours forth abundantly from the wall all on its own.”

She filled the awkward atmosphere with whatever words came to mind. Caligo, having obediently settled into the tub as instructed, gazed at her after a moment with something like regret.

“I thought we would do this together.”

‘What? Bathe together?’

“I… I will bathe alone later.”

At this unexpected remark, her face flushed for no reason. Suddenly, the perfectly temperate bath chamber felt far too warm.

Now that he can speak, there is nothing he will not say.

Barely managing to overcome the atmosphere that had been turning strange since earlier, Fiona grasped a bar of soap in her hand.

“Stay there. I will wash your hair.”

Caligo looked at her with puzzlement. Thinking it better to show him through action than words, she first rolled up her sleeves.

“Lean back.”

He compliantly leaned back against the tub. Encountered somewhere other than a bed, Caligo was remarkably docile and gentle. From just now until this moment, his obedient compliance with her words seemed almost endearing—was she going mad?

Pushing aside such idle thoughts, Fiona began to work the soap through his hair.

For a while, silence lingered in the bathroom where steam rose hazily.

Suddenly, the situation felt utterly surreal. That she should bring a husband whose face she had not even known until yesterday and wash him like this. Of course, it was not an unpleasant feeling.

His wet black hair slipped smoothly between her fingers.

Come to think of it, though there could not have been anyone tending to him all this while, Caligo’s hair was not shaggy but trimmed to a perfectly suitable length. Even before she washed it, it was neither dirty nor brittle, but soft and fine of texture.

As she had noticed when they shared a bed, Caligo’s body always carried a clean, pleasant scent. This was part of why she had been able to endure their arduous couplings.

Not only was his body smooth without a single hair and his skin soft, but the face before her now bore not even a trace of stubble.

Though she had been carefully avoiding letting her gaze wander there, Fiona knew. She knew that between his legs as well, he was smooth without a single hair.

Who could have been tending to him? How was this possible? Lost in thought at the belated sense of wrongness, Fiona soon found herself meeting eyes with him as he gazed up at her from his reclined position.

Her face flushed instantly, and she quickly averted her gaze, but wherever she looked felt strange and suggestive. His skin, far too white and clean for one who had lived roughly, was flushed a delicate pink from the heat of the warm water. The humid air and the softly lapping water sounds somehow stimulated Fiona further.

“Could… could you close your eyes?”

Yet even with his eyes closed, the situation did not greatly improve. His face, surrendered to her care as he lay back, resembled a carefully carved marble sculpture.

In contrast, the sternocleidomastoid stretching beneath that beautiful face and his prominent Adam’s apple were intensely masculine. His straight collarbone and firmly defined shoulder muscles were more perfect than any man’s body Fiona had ever seen.

Adding to this, the sinewy upper arms, the powerful pectorals and abdominal muscles, and further down…