Chapter 11
Chapter 11
“You’re drunk,” said Kalion as he yanked his sleeve out of her grasp. There was no way that she’d lay a hand on him if she’d been in a sober frame of mind.
Erna lashed back at him, “Of course I am! How else do you expect me to do this? Just get it over with or are you incapable of doing it? If that’s the case, just be honest and tell it as it is!”
Kalion had to bite his lip at Erna’s outburst which was not her usual provocation. They had a knack for getting on each other’s nerves. Her continued mocking words about his inability to get an erection reverberated in his mind. It felt as if someone had taken a sharp-edged sword and sliced deeply through his pride.
Adding fuel to the fire, Erna mockingly said, “You’re not all that great anyway. Just get hard, put it in, and ejaculate. If you can’t even do that…”
At that moment, Kalion snapped. He lifted his hand to her forehead and pressed down hard with his pointer finger. Erna, who was now standing, toppled over onto the large four-poster bed. He couldn’t believe she had stumbled from just the force of his finger. When she opened her eyes again, his massive body hovered over her.
“Right, I am not great at this,” Kalion said, gritting his teeth, “So just deal with it!”
Still reeling from her icy words, he roughly spread her legs open with his solid knees. Erna’s face went paler than usual as his beefy body found a comfortable spot between her legs, and she held her breath in fearful anticipation. It felt as if he was about to devour her alive!
A sense of shame rippled through Kalion’s body as he hesitantly reached out to grab her thin negligee, trying to avoid touching her as he pulled it open to expose her slender body. Their relationship was based on an agreement, yet he felt as if he was raping her and her drunken tears made him more conscious to avoid touching her in any other way than was needed.
Does it have to be like this? Do I have to go through with this? he thought regretfully.
She refused to open the negligee herself, perhaps feeling as if it was a command from him and he felt like dying in many ways as he did it himself.
How could he feel so dirty?
While he was clenching his jaw and moving his hands, Erna, no doubt uncomfortable from having her legs forced open, started tossing and turning beneath him. As a result, both their bodies touched, skin on skin and surprised by the unexpected contact, he lost his balance. On impulse, he held his arms out to steady himself. However, what was under his hands was not the bed’s mattress but the bare flesh of Erna’s legs. Kalion, whose hands were now gripping soft, delicate thighs, hastily removed his hands off of her body and impulsively brushed them off as if he’d accidentally touched a lump of hot coal.
He questioned if what he had just touched a moment ago was a real person. Why did she feel so smooth and so soft?
Touching Erna’s skin unexpectedly felt unusually pleasant to Kalion and it was a sensation he was unaccustomed to feeling. He knew very well what it felt like to squeeze another person’s flesh. Didn’t he wrestle with other knights every day to train himself? As knights, they not only learned sword skills, they trained their bodies too to avoid bodily damage during a fight without a sword, so physical fitness also had to be studied and practiced as a skill. Twisting arms behind the back, neck strangulation, and learning how to break legs were part of his daily routine, and having practiced these skills for so long, he knew exactly how skin, muscles, and bones felt in his grasp. He naively assumed that a woman’s body would feel the same.
While still brushing his hands off, he looked down at the flesh he had just held a moment ago. The area above Erna’s long, thin, pale legs had turned a light red color.
How absurd. How could skin change color like that, almost instantaneously, just from the touch of another person? And how could it be so smooth?
The skin he’d felt a few seconds ago was most certainly different from the knights’ rough skin, this was a smooth texture he’d experienced for the first time. If he had to find a similar feeling, it was almost like the silk outfit he sometimes wore at events. It wasn’t a bad feeling, it just caught him by surprise. However, Kalion now wiped his hands on his clothes like a madman because it was Erna’s flesh, which unsettled him.
Erna sighed loudly after seeing his reaction to her body, and in a defensive tone spat at him, “You’re not the only one who feels like shit you know!”
Kalion, who was about to say he was more surprised as opposed to feeling shitty, clamped his mouth shut. It didn’t matter how he felt anyway. He tried to get his act together again. The goal was still the same: Finish quickly and get out of this room!
Whatever happens, don’t be shocked, and don’t stop until the deed is done, he thought.
Erna’s body flinched and twitched as he once again pulled her negligee up. Looking down, all he saw was a tiny waist, long well-shaped legs, and plain white panties which covered her womanhood. The decision to ‘finish quickly and get out of this room’ was instantly shattered as he looked at her mostly exposed body. When he had entered the room earlier, he had been certain he could get the job done and leave in no time. That was no longer the case.
What was it about a naked woman’s body that made him feel this way? It was made up of flesh and bones just like a man’s body. If Cedric heard this, he’d stare directly into Kalion’s eyes, and with a humorous look on his face, say, ‘Sir, you cannot be serious.’
But he was being serious now, although he just couldn’t understand why he felt so agitated. Was it perhaps that she was curvaceous and thinner than him? No, that wasn’t it. It was the same person, whether or not she was clothed or half undressed. His eyes were locked, staring blatantly at the curved lines that couldn’t be found on a man’s body. The more that the reality of the situation sunk in, the more he clenched his jaw.
His mind tried to convince him that there was nothing to it. He just needed to pull her panties off and spread her legs, and insert his manhood into her after getting an erection… that was the problem though, he couldn’t get aroused.
“Shit,” he blurted.
Even Erna, in the intoxicated state she was in, flinched at the harsh sound that emanated from the back of his throat.
Kalion had confirmed it to himself, he couldn’t touch her. A war was raging in his mind, he knew he had to try one more time. He was about to lift his hand to grab her panties, but he struggled to bring his hand close to her, let alone touch the flimsy undergarment.
Was it embarrassment or shyness? Never before had he felt such confusing feelings, and desperation to reach an outcome. For what reason should he be hesitating like this?
And then, finally, it struck him, like a solid blow to the head… Hatred!
Ten years ago, hatred was the sole emotion that had flowed between Erna and Kalion. The memory of her yelling out, ‘I’ll kill you if you touch me on this bed!’, was still vivid in his mind. It all made sense now and he hurriedly hoisted himself up and got off the bed. Erna followed suit, lowering her negligee and grabbing a woolen blanket to wrap herself in; just as she had done ten years ago. After a long and awkward silence, she fell flat on the bed without saying a word.
Kalion approached the four-poster bed, unsure of how to proceed but Erna seemed uninterested in his advance and curled her body up into a fetal position, a subconscious defense mechanism. Kalion backed away slowly and returned to the emerald green sofa, taking a deep swallow of whiskey to settle his nerves. History had just repeated itself. Their appearances may have changed, but their behavior was no different from that of a decade ago.
*
Erna’s breathing stopped briefly when she opened her eyes. Her body was tightly bound by something. She squealed frantically, “What the hell is this?”
A pain immediately shot up from inside her as she spoke, forcing out a groan. Her mind was desperately trying to find an answer.
What’s happening? What is this place? What in the world has happened to me? This doesn’t look like the grand duke’s castle.
Something like this could never happen to her in the grand duke’s castle. Erna blinked her eyes, trying to adjust her vision. With a throbbing headache, she began to realize, little by little, what kind of situation she was in.
She let out a sigh of relief as she said, “A blanket.”
She honestly thought she had been bound, but then she realized it was a woolen blanket that kept her trapped. Wriggling her neck about, she managed to stick her head out completely and took a deep breath. Instead of the hot and stale air from inside of it, fresh air now filled her lungs. She scanned the surroundings while taking more deep breaths.
Despite her hazy vision, Erna realized right away that she was not in the familiar comfort of her room, and when she tried to get up, a pain hit her that almost made her faint.
“Ouch!” she yelled loudly.
While grabbing her forehead and sitting upright, she recalled the fruity liqueur she had downed the night before. “Why did I drink that?” she cursed herself.
At that moment, she heard a voice from behind her.
“You are awake,” said Kalion sarcastically.
Erna jolted at the unexpected sound of a man’s voice, prompting her to turn around quickly. Kalion was sitting right there. She was about to scurry back, but she got caught in the pesky woolen blanket and fell back. Rolling on the bed like a caterpillar, she struggled out of it and shouted, “What is this? Why are you here?”
“I guess you’re still out of it… You remember what happened last night, right? You should at least remember up until the liqueur kicked in,” he said.
Kalion’s voice was strained as if he’d been to hell and back. At his words, Erna started to recall, one by one, the events of the previous evening: the letter sent by the two kingdoms, and the agreement between the married couple; entering the room for the first time in ten years; drinking the liqueur, and the attempt at intercourse.
She quickly patted her body down. Fortunately, she had worn her silk negligee during the act, or at least she thought she had but she couldn’t quite remember. She was checking between her legs when she asked Kalion, “Did we do it?”
“Do what?” he asked.
“I asked: did we do it?!” she said in a demanding tone.
Like someone had removed a piece of her memory, she couldn’t remember a thing after drinking the fruity liqueur. But one thing was certain, she had laid down on the bed at some point and ordered Kalion to do it.