I Had No Complaints About This Marriage - Chapter 46

She’d come here prepared—dressed to infiltrate this cesspool, enduring leers from trash who didn’t deserve to breathe her air. He remembered their awed stares, the way they’d looked at her. The way his vision had splintered in that moment.

The realization that what was his alone to cherish could be admired by others made something vile rise in his throat.

“Did you really go to the informant just to look for information about a bastard child?”

Esina knew she was beautiful—she’d even boasted about playing with multiple men before.

But the Esina of the Lehier family had no experience in high society.

If she’d ever been with a man before, it wouldn’t have been someone of Herman’s status—more likely, the kind of worthless trash she’d just driven off.

Just as he’d once pressed her during their intimacy.

Street thugs. Drifters. Servants or laborers.

‘If she wanted to…’

She could take another man.

Anyone but me.

The thought sent a cold wave crashing over his skull.

What if Esina was so angry with him now that—

Her sweet gazes stopped entirely. Her affection dried up.

…What if, upon hearing rumors of her husband’s bastard child, she’d sought out another man herself?

What if the bastard child was just an excuse, and she’d planned to take a lover in revenge—or run away with one?

Logically, he knew it was a leap. But logic had nothing to do with the filth churning in his gut. He hadn’t expected to feel this disgusted.

Before he could stop himself, the words slipped from his lips like a blade.

“If you’re even thinking of that—let it go, Esina.”

To mask the fury simmering beneath, Herman curved his lips into a smile—slow, molten, the kind a demon might wear while luring prey.

“Until you’re carrying my child—”

“—I’ll only ever f**k you.”

“Any children I have will come from you alone.”

“Don’t even dream of anything else.”

“Wh—?”

Esina’s protest dissolved into a hiccup as his fingers slid between her thighs. Herman swallowed the sound with a kiss, laughing darkly against her lips.

“Ah—! Nnh…!”

Creak. The solid mahogany bed groaned again. A fresh gush spilled from the slender woman’s thighs, soaking the sheets already sticky with her earlier spills.

Herman licked his lower lip, watching Esina writhe beneath him. His patience had run out long before he’d dragged her here.

“N-not here…!”

Her strangled cry halted his fingers just as they pressed at her entrance.

Flushed from neck to hairline, she stammered through her shame. Not here. I don’t want this here.

Only then did the surroundings come into focus—the chaotic alley, strewn with garbage and the hem of her dress soaked in foul-smelling gutter water. Under normal circumstances, Herman would’ve recoiled from such filth without a second glance. Yet here he was, dragging Esina deeper into it.

“Come here.”

His grip on her wrist tightened as he pulled her toward a dilapidated building, its exterior crumbling but its interior revealing something unexpected, a hidden annex, lavishly furnished, far removed from the squalor outside.

This was no ordinary hideout.

A mahogany bed, as opulent as the one in their estate, dominated the room. Intricate carpets softened each step, and the flickering light of scented candles cast shadows over exotic decor—a stark contrast to the grime they’d just escaped.

The moment the door closed behind them, Herman stripped Esina bare without ceremony, as if nothing else mattered.

Safe at last.

‘It’s fine.’

She was still in his grasp. Still his. Even her reckless search for a supposed bastard child only proved one thing, she cared enough to investigate. Even if it was out of spite, even if she’d planned to retaliate by finding another man—

It all meant she still thought of him.

…It had to.

“H-Herman…!”

Her body responded to his touch with shameless honesty, a whimper escaping her lips as warmth pooled between her thighs.

“Ngh…!”

Creak.

The sturdy mahogany bed cried out once more. At the same time, a gush of liquid burst forth from between the pale, delicate legs of the woman. The sheets, already damp and slick, grew even more soaked.

Herman licked his lower lip as he gazed at Esina lying on the bed. His patience had long since run dry from bringing her this far.

“W-wait, not here!”