Chapter 25
Their breathing was ragged, bodies still entwined. Even between breaths, Lucian caressed Asteria’s full b*****s.
She had no strength left to resist and lay limp, receiving his hot breath against her skin.
“To lose your sacred power if you lose your virginity… What a cruel restriction.”
Lucian’s voice rumbled low. He pulled her undergarments back into place and properly rearranged her clothes. Asteria could not move so much as a finger in the aftermath of her climax.
“But I can still desire you, just as I do now.”
Obsession pooled in Lucian’s blue eyes. It was an obsession that said he would never let her go.
Only then did Asteria realize it. She would never be able to escape Lucian’s desire. Nothing had changed simply because he had taken an Empress.
Your Majesty, you must not do this to me.
“As long as you don’t lose your virginity, what’s the harm?”
“But…”
Lucian gently brushed back her disheveled hair. The touch was gentle, at odds with his words.
“And don’t call me ‘Your Majesty.’ Call me by my name.”
It was a command, for all its softness. Asteria nodded slowly.
“Lu… cian, you have Her Majesty the Empress now.”
“What does that have to do with us?”
“Of course it has everything to do with us. It is not right for you to satisfy your desires on me.”
“No.”
Lucian said flatly.
“I may not be able to take your virginity, but I can desire you. That has nothing whatsoever to do with the Empress.”
Asteria pressed her lips tightly together.
It seemed no words could change Lucian’s mind right now.
“Well then, I’ll come again another time.”
Lucian pressed his lips to Asteria’s forehead, then pulled away, straightened his clothes, and rose.
“No need to see me off.”
With those parting words, he left the room.
Asteria let out a long sigh only after his presence had completely faded. Her body, ravished by his hands, still burned.
That she had climaxed under his touch was an undeniable truth. It had been a flood of sensation she had never experienced in her life. The aftershocks lingered still.
“Saintess…”
When Clarisse, sensing something amiss, entered the room, she found Asteria sprawled in the languor of ecstasy.
Lucian had rearranged her undergarments and clothes, but the evidence of his roaming hands could not be erased.
“Saintess…”
Resignation had settled in Asteria’s eyes.
“Clarisse, I think I need to bathe again.”
“…Yes.”
When Asteria undressed with Clarisse’s help, red blossoms were scattered across her fair, milky skin.
The marks were especially prominent on her pale b*****s. Once her damp undergarments were removed, the traces of Lucian’s s***n and the slick evidence of her own arousal were laid bare.
“S-Saintess…”
“Its all right. I haven’t lost my virginity yet.”
From those words alone, Clarisse could piece together the gist of what had happened.
But she had no idea how to comfort Asteria. At the same time, a quiet dread crept over her. She knew all too well what fate had befallen the previous Emperor’s Saintess.
“Clarisse, is there truly nothing I can do?”
Asteria’s voice trembled with sorrow.
“No… Forgive me.”
The Saintess had no right to refuse the Emperor. Thus had the men of the Orbien imperial line desired the Lumines Saintesses, generation after generation. It was an obsession etched into their very blood.
And Asteria was breathtakingly beautiful. Her beauty she seemed almost divine. If even Clarisse, who had raised her since childhood, could see it, how must she appear to a man of Lucian’s virility?
“I feel as though I am sinning against Her Majesty the Empress.”
Asteria recalled the woman from her dream who had strangled her.
That dream had not been wrong. Lucian had said he refused to bed the Empress because of Asteria. And he had directed his lust where it should never have gone: throbbing and spending himself on her.
“This is not your fault, Saintess.”
How could being born with such exquisite grace ever be called a sin? All of this was because of Lucian’s twisted desire.
And yet that desire was almost inevitable. No matter who beheld her, Asteria’s ethereal beauty would never fade.
“I thought that once the imperial wedding took place, this would stop.”
Asteria hung her head.
“But I was wrong.”
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