Chapter 70
Damn. A low sigh and a roughly uttered curse escaped through the man’s teeth. Frozen in place for a moment, Aisen quickly blurted out “I’m sorry!” and scurried out of the greenhouse.
‘Wh-What did I just see? N-Naked skin?’
His heart pounded wildly. It wasn’t simply because he saw a man’s bare back. He’d seen countless fellow knights naked during training. What startled him was the indescribable, peculiar atmosphere radiating from that bare back.
‘Huh? Wait, but that voice just now was definitely…’
As he paused, struck by the sudden thought, the door clicked open and a familiar figure appeared.
“Aisen Erkman.”
“B-Brother Viern…?”
Right, he hadn’t been mistaken. The owner of that bare back was none other than his brother, Viern!
“So now you wander the palace without even checking if someone’s inside? Did it not occur to you that the person you ran into in there might not have been me? Or was that what you were hoping for?”
“No, no, Brother! I absolutely did not enter without permission hoping to see someone naked! I swear!”
“Pervert…”
Aisen protested his innocence, but it was futile. A thought like, ‘Isn’t the person not wearing clothes in a place like this more of a pervert?’ crossed his mind, but he couldn’t dare voice such a thing to his respected brother. Instead, he very, very cautiously gauged his brother’s mood and asked.
“Um, but Brother, what were you doing here…?”
“…….”
At his question, Viern’s mouth tightened into a firm line.
Looking puzzled, Aisen suddenly noticed a red mark on Viern’s neck, revealed by the open collar of his shirt.
‘Wait, now that I think about it, earlier… Brother’s back had what looked like… a woman’s nail marks…’
In that instant, Aisen realized the true nature of the peculiar atmosphere he felt when he saw his brother’s back earlier. A look of utter shock dawned on his face. Could it be that his respected brother Viern was in the Princess’s greenhouse garden with…?
“W-Were you with a woman?”
Aisen stared at Viern with disbelief, taking a step back. At that look, which seemed to view him as some kind of vile villain, Viern’s face twisted violently.
“N-No matter what, this, this doesn’t seem right, Brother! T-To do s-such a thing in the Princess’s greenhouse garden… Even though the Princess has lost her memory now, you know full well how much she liked you…”
To say the least, it was the first time Aisen Erkman had ever raised his voice like this to his eldest brother.
“Later, when Her Highness’s memories return, think of how that innocent young lady you had a secret rendezvous with will be tormented by our wicked Princess!”
Of course, his worry was for some poor young lady who would become Diana’s scapegoat.
“How impertinent, Aisen. Worrying about another woman over me? Last time on my birthday, you worried as if I were going to kill the Marquis’s daughter.”
Just then, Diana, emerging from deeper inside the greenhouse, commented in a bored voice.
“Huh? Your Highness?”
Aisen blinked rapidly, staring at Diana.
“Why are you coming out from in there, Your Highness?”
“Why? This is my greenhouse garden. Is there a problem?”
“But just a moment ago, Brother Viern was clearly inside there…”
As the bewildered Aisen, with a foolish look on his face, struggled to grasp the situation…
“The outside air is chilly.”
Viern approached Diana and draped his outer coat over her shoulders.
“Thank you, Viern.”
Diana beamed at him. In response, Viern’s eyes softened as he gently smoothed her disheveled hair with his hand. The gaze they shared was sweet, as if honey were dripping from it.
“Huh… huh?”
Enveloped in the strange atmosphere flowing between the two, Aisen, who had been staring blankly, widened his eyes in surprise. Viern had just scooped Diana into his arms as she complained that her legs felt weak.
With a small gasp and a laugh, Diana wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling his head down to press their foreheads together. The sweet scene, looking every bit like lovers, felt utterly natural.
“Wh-Why are Your Highness and Brother Viern…?”
Utter confusion bloomed across Aisen’s face. At his dazed, blinking, foolish expression, Viern frowned and snapped.
“Aisen Erkman. You will return to the estate at once and avoid Her Highness’s sight for the day.”
“Y-Yes, Brother… Huh? Wait, but just now, the Princess’s memory…?”
Finally catching on to something, Aisen stared at Diana in shock. When Diana had come out of the greenhouse earlier, she had clearly referenced events from before her memory loss. Moreover, she had addressed him not as ‘Duke’ but as ‘Viern’, hadn’t she? Just like before she lost her memory.
“Well then, see you tomorrow, Aisen.”
Diana, seemingly tired, yawned and waved lazily at Aisen. However, Viern, as if unwilling to tolerate even a single glance from Aisen toward her, pulled her body even tighter against his, blocking the line of sight, and strode away.
“Just what in the world happened…?”
Aisen scratched his head, staring after the two receding figures for a long time. Not long after, rumors spread like wildfire throughout the palace that Princess Diana had recovered her memory and become the lover of Duke Erkman.
* * *
“Viern, why are you so angry?”
Diana rolled over on the bed and snuggled up next to Viern. He paused briefly, then answered with a soft smile.
“I was never angry.”
“Yes, you were. Look, Viern—when you’re angry, the muscles around this eye get all tight. And when you smile to hide your anger, your eyebrows angle down like this, like this.”
At Diana’s sharp observation as she poked at the corner of his eye, Viern sighed as if conceding defeat.
“……We almost showed your body to that brat Aisen. That’s why I told you to lock the greenhouse door.”
He hadn’t planned from the start to do that there. During their tea time, he had succumbed to Diana’s seduction and ended up on top of her. He tried to lock the door afterward, but she stopped him.
However, anyone who saw her face, whispering to spread her legs a little and forget the door and just drive into her, wouldn’t have been able to blame him for that.
Just as they had finished a bout of lovemaking and were languishing in the afterglow, Aisen had chosen that moment to open the greenhouse door and walk in. The fact that it was Aisen, of all people, grated on Viern’s nerves, even though he knew she had no feelings for the boy whatsoever.
“But I like it better with the door unlocked. It’s exciting, not knowing when someone might walk in.”
Diana giggled, and seeing her like that, Viern let go of his lingering annoyance and chuckled softly.
“Anyway, what a pervert.”
“Wanna do something even more perverted?”
Diana grinned and pressed her body against him. The warm, clean scent of her freshly washed skin made heat pool in his lower abdomen, but he forced a steady voice and asked.
“What do you mean, ‘more perverted’?”
“Mmm, I read about it in this book…”
The book she pulled from under the pillow was boldly titled 『The Princess and Her Knight, Even During the Day』. Seeing it, Viern narrowed his eyes. It seemed to be a sequel to that damnable book he had ordered thrown away before.
“I told you to stop reading such corrupting books.”
“But there are so many things in here I want to try with you…”
“Enough. We don’t need this kind of book. I’ll show you things far more perverted and far more pleasurable.”
“Huh? Viern, you know about things like… Viern?”
With a rustling sound, Viern untied the cravat from his neck and used it to blindfold Diana.
“Wait, Viern. I can’t see anything, hmph…!”
In an instant, her body was flipped over, and a firm palm invaded beneath the hem of her dress.
“Hh, ah…!”
Perhaps because she couldn’t see, the sensation of his hands stroking her thighs and b******s, and the hot breath against her most intimate place, felt twice as stimulating as usual.
“V-Viern, this, this feels a little, aahn…!”
Viern’s lips greedily sucked at her closed entrance, as if engaged in a passionate kiss.
Plunge—!
Soon, a large, rigid pillar suddenly pried open her inner depths and plunged inside. The force of his thrusts, driving deep to the mouth of her womb, drew higher and higher moans from Diana.
Rip, crinkle. The sound of tearing paper could be heard, but Diana had no spare attention to care about what it was.
Viern glanced at the savagely torn book, smiled with satisfaction, and drove his hips upward.
“Ha, Your Highness…”
Pressing his chest against her back, he leaned down, kneading her b****t roughly with one hand as he whispered.
“Aahn, ah, ah!”
“I’ll pound you so hard you won’t even remember this disgusting little book.”
“Hah, yes, Viern, Viern, hmph…!”
Her endless cries were swallowed by his lips.
“Hhhng, mmm, ah…”
“…….”
Slowly breaking the kiss, Viern looked down intently at her face—blindfolded, flushed, and turned instinctively toward where he should be.
“……I love you, my Princess.”
Overwhelmed by the dense, profound affection—deeper than the excitement and ecstasy on her face—Viern couldn’t help but kiss her once more.
“I love you t-too, ah…!”
A kiss slightly longer and deeper than the last accompanied his movements.
The fading late afternoon sun warmly illuminated the two figures moving amidst the scattered scraps of torn paper.
Fin
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