Chapter 76
It was the same afterward.
The monsters swarmed in at all times, as if unwilling to give the Grand Duke time to court. The Grand Duke couldn’t even find time to see his aide, let alone worry about why the aide wasn’t responding to his courtship.
No. He could see him, but couldn’t spend time with him. As a result, every time the aide flickered in his vision, anxiety welled up, making him rampage even more violently for a while.
Perhaps thanks to his constant rampaging, a brief moment to catch his breath emerged.
As soon as he had a moment, the Grand Duke headed straight for his aide. If he dawdled, those damned creatures might swarm again.
How many days had he been holding back in anxiety and anger? Now even his sleek fur coat, which his aide liked so much, was at risk of being ruined by stress.
It was already stressful that his mate wasn’t responding to his courtship, but he couldn’t let even the fur coat that the mate liked get ruined.
Today, he was determined not to be interrupted. He didn’t know exactly what to do, but he would settle this one way or another.
With firm resolve, the Grand Duke strode towards the inner castle. The knights and soldiers returning to the inner castle with him silently fled from the Grand Duke’s ominous aura, but such trivial matters were already beyond the Grand Duke’s awareness.
As he approached the inner castle with his golden eyes gleaming, the Grand Duke immediately sensed a familiar presence.
A presence he could recognize instantly among countless others. It was his aide’s presence.
The moment he sensed it, all of the Grand Duke’s senses focused in that direction, his whiskers perking up as if pointing towards prey.
The aide was pacing endlessly along the path the Grand Duke would take. Just like in the early days when they first met, waiting for the Grand Duke to come find him during patrol.
In those footsteps repeating the same path over and over, the Grand Duke suddenly read impatience.
Had he, like the Grand Duke, been waiting for time to spend together?
In normal circumstances, this would have made his heart melt and his tail stand straight up, but for some reason, it only made him feel more urgent now.
The Grand Duke quickened his pace.
And finally, the moment his aide spotted the Grand Duke approaching him.
The Grand Duke thought.
If that guy had a tail right now, it would be standing up sky-high. If he had a furry chest, it would be all puffed up.
His aide wasn’t a cat, and therefore had neither a tail nor a fluffy chest. Nevertheless, the emotion the aide was displaying at this moment was unmistakably clear.
Watching his aide approach with an emotion that any beast would interpret as overflowing joy, the Grand Duke suddenly felt the same thirst he had felt before, gnawing at the back of his throat.
He wanted to touch him.
The thirst that started in his throat spread like wildfire, burning from the top of his head to the tip of his tail in an instant.
He wanted to touch him. He wanted to possess him. He craved him so much he felt he might go mad.
Unable to resist the fire racing down his spine, the Grand Duke strode over and snatched up his aide.
The aide’s neatly folded, narrow eyes widened in surprise.
Seeing this, thirst surged and the Grand Duke unconsciously swallowed.
Even though he had already snatched him and placed him under his forepaws, even though this guy was already as good as caught by the scruff of his neck, the Grand Duke felt impatient with desire to possess him.
The impatience gnawing at his nerves told the Grand Duke. That he needed to touch the mate before him. That he needed to touch him completely, leaving no distance or gap between them.
So the Grand Duke, following the method he had recently learned, pressed his skin against his aide’s.
Curly hair tangled between his fingers, and their lips met.
The Grand Duke confirmed the outline of the one with a lower body temperature than his own by rubbing his skin against him. The sensation of dry lips was felt vividly through the point of contact.
But that wasn’t nearly enough to quench his thirst. The Grand Duke pressed his lips against the lukewarm lips again, trying to get as close as possible without leaving even a hair’s breadth of space. He wanted to touch more, more completely.
He wanted to feel that lukewarm body temperature more directly.
Before he knew it, the impatience that had climbed up his cervical vertebrae whispered around his ears. That the outline wasn’t enough. That he needed to touch more. That he needed to touch deeper.
Their skin was already pressed together without any gap. But how could he go deeper than this? Should he swallow this guy whole and put him in his stomach? Would that quench this thirst?
The Grand Duke impulsively opened his mouth. And with that, he bit the aide’s soft lips that were touching his.
As sharp canines crushed the most tender skin.
“Ugh.”
A low moan escaped from the aide’s mouth.
At that moment, the Grand Duke’s pupils contracted narrowly. His golden eyes, like crushed and kneaded freesia petals just before wilting after full bloom, stared at his aide as if confirming something.
Had his usually keen and cool senses that captured everything broken down somehow? The Grand Duke couldn’t understand why such a small sound that flowed out for just a moment felt like such a strong stimulus.
He only clearly felt the body temperature, which had been lower than his own, rising through the point of contact.
That sensation, too, was as intense as the sound from just before, making his brain feel like it was boiling from the excessive stimulation.
With a tingling sensation in his lower back, the Grand Duke…
Deng deng deng deng deng deng-
The Grand Duke…
Deng deng deng deng deng deng-
The Grand Duke.
Deng deng deng deng deng deng deng-
Looking at his aide with eyes that seemed like he might really devour him, the Grand Duke resolved.
That he would end this monster wave as quickly as possible.
Without fail.
* * *
In the place the Grand Duke had left.
Standing there blankly, watching the Grand Duke’s retreating figure, Ruan raised his hands and grasped his own head.
And started to pull at it.
“Am I crazy…”
Until just now, his heart had been overflowing with affection for the Grand Duke. He had even thought that he would express that affection when they met.
But… That wasn’t that kind of affection, was it?
But then. But then why…
‘Why the hell did I moan…’
Pulling at his hair, Ruan recalled the situation from just moments ago.
Clearly, when the Grand Duke first pressed his lips against his, Ruan’s reason was still intact.
Of course, it was a bit startling to be grabbed and headbutted with a muzzle as soon as he saw him… But recognizing that the Grand Duke, for whatever reason, was showing great interest in lip-bumping, Ruan had recently resolved that he, as a human, would keep his wits about him.
Ruan was able to quickly regain his composure and remind himself that this was just a cat’s muzzle bump.
He was so composed that, coincidentally with no one around, he even had the presence of mind to think that he should quickly offer his lips and take the cat inside.
But the problem was that this cat’s muzzle bump was… a little different from previous muzzle bumps.
The Grand Duke was particularly persistent today.
Very persistent.
In other words… He was so persistent that even someone who hadn’t been thinking that way started to have such thoughts after a while.
Even Ruan, who had been at ease with the Grand Duke pressing his lips insistently while holding the back of his neck with his large hand, giving no chance to escape, began to feel a sense of crisis.
This was clearly a cat’s muzzle bump, but… This was really… Wasn’t it? Closing his eyes because the Grand Duke’s excessively handsome features, looking at him as if he would devour him, were overwhelming, it felt even stranger. So when he opened his eyes again, he saw the cat’s overly handsome exterior once more.
Unable to do this or that, Ruan thought.
It was fortunate that this cat only knew how to press his lips, given how things were already like this with just lip contact.
While enduring the cat’s muzzle bumps with somewhat mixed feelings, the Grand Duke suddenly bit Ruan’s lip.
For Ruan, who was already slightly aroused from the previous kisses, this unexpected stimulation was surprisingly intense.
‘Shit.’
Ruan had become a human who moaned after being bitten by a cat.
Filled with self-loathing, Ruan pulled at his hair once again.
To show such disgraceful behavior after making such resolutions. He couldn’t bear to face that pure cat.
He had thought he wasn’t the kind of person who would do foolish things blinded by lust. He never knew he was such a person with so little self-control.
If he were to succumb to lust and pounce on the cat…
As Ruan was making this terrible assumption, the image of a black-furred cat looking at him with clear eyes full of trust suddenly appeared in his mind.
‘No.’
As a butler, he had a duty to protect his precious cat from beastly humans. He couldn’t do such a shameless thing to his innocent cat.
‘Even though I’ve resolved many times to pull myself together and face the Grand Duke properly, given what I’ve done, I’m starting to doubt myself…’
Heaving a deep sigh, Ruan began to tidy up his hair, which was a mess from the Grand Duke’s ruffling and his own pulling. The curly long hair seemed to have been the original hairstyle of ‘Ruan Daen’, so he was maintaining it, but it was quite troublesome to manage.
As Ruan roughly combed through his tangled hair with his hands, he thought.
He hoped the Grand Duke would lose interest in muzzle bumping before he committed some beastly act.
If possible… before the monster wave ended and they returned to spending all day together.
