ESL Chapter 51

The sound of a door opening and closing was followed by the rustling of a trailing dress, and Luciel silently cursed under his breath. The aphrodisiac his uncle had forcibly made him consume was truly terrifying. If he relaxed even slightly, he felt as though the savage beast coiled inside him would burst free at any moment, so he clenched his teeth where no one could see.

The women his uncle had deliberately sent were, without exception, all voluptuous figures with exceptional skills in the bedroom. If he hadn’t possessed a certain degree of resistance to poisons, if he hadn’t despised the heavy scent of perfume and cosmetics, his uncle’s plan might have already succeeded.

“…..”

As the rustling of the dress drew ever closer, Luciel grabbed the beast that was about to break loose and forced it back down. This woman, unlike the ones before her, carried neither the thick scent of cosmetics nor perfume, which made the beast resist even more violently than it had with the others. He clenched his teeth and suppressed it all the more forcefully. So powerfully that he could barely breathe… He was pouring every ounce of his strength into subduing the beast when it happened.

“Luciel.”

A girl’s voice he had thought he would never hear again rang in his ears.

Is this a dream…?

Luciel doubted his own ears. It was the voice of someone who could not possibly be here — no, someone who should not be here. But when the voice rang in his ears again, he realized it was no dream.

“Luciel. Are you all right?”

His eyes snapped open, and his emerald eyes — clouded to their absolute limit — met a pair of beautiful crimson eyes gazing back at him.

“…Lea…?”

The moment he recognized who stood before him, Luciel stared at her blankly. And in that shock, he lost his grip on the beast he had been struggling so desperately to hold down. The instant the beast he had confined with every ounce of his strength broke free, Luciel’s once-beautiful blue eyes clouded over completely, as though shrouded in storm clouds.

Lea’s eyes went wide with surprise as Luciel suddenly yanked her roughly toward him and crashed his lips against hers.

Ah…!

Lea had been too startled to think of pushing him away, and when he abruptly bit down hard on her lower lip, the pain made her let out an involuntary moan. He didn’t miss that opening. His tongue slipped through her parted lips and moved through her mouth as though it were his own territory. Pinning down her tongue as it tried to flee, Luciel explored her with rough, violent hunger. It was a kiss so filled with desire it was nearly overwhelming for Lea, who had never kissed a man in her life. Perhaps because of that, she lost her composure in a way entirely unlike herself and momentarily lost her grip on her senses.

Riiip.

Fortunately, the sound of the front of her dress tearing brought her partway back to her senses. Somewhere in the intervening moments, she found herself lying on the floor, with Luciel — his reason stolen by the aphrodisiac — pressing her body down so she couldn’t move. She couldn’t even tell how long the kiss had lasted. Only her lips, swollen and split from what he had done, remained as evidence, delivering a stinging, smarting pain.

“…….”

Luciel’s gaze, having thoroughly savored her lips, dropped to her chest — fair and softly curved where it was exposed through the torn dress. Even half-revealed, the alluring sight made his breathing grow even more ragged, and his eyes gleamed with raw desire.

“Ugh!”

Lea’s beautiful face scrunched slightly in pain when Luciel bit into her neck and sucked hard. One of his hands was moving over her half-exposed chest, while the other was pushing up her skirt.

This seems like a dangerous situation…

Now fully returned to her senses thanks to his bite, she felt his lips moving gradually lower and slowly lifted her left hand. With her thumb, she pressed one of the ancient characters on the ring she wore on that hand’s third finger, activating its detoxification function. While the ancient characters engraved on the ring flickered with faint light and faded, she raised her hand and placed it on Luciel’s back.

“Luciel.”

Slowly stroking his back, Lea called his name in a voice that was calm yet firm. In response, Luciel’s body flinched, as though the detoxification had begun.

“Lu. Ci. El.”

When she called his name once more, he — who had moments ago been moving against the upper part of her chest — stopped astonishingly and lifted his head to look at her. His reddened lips, and his moist emerald eyes completely dominated by desire, were so beautiful they were almost bewitching. At this moment, most women would have been so entranced by his gaze that they would have surrendered everything. But his opponent was none other than Lea.

“Lu. Ci. El.”

When she called his name one final time with firm resolution, the eyes that had been completely clouded over slowly began to recover their light.

“….Lea…”

Struggling desperately to catch and subdue the rampaging beast, Luciel squeezed his eyes tightly shut. Every vein in his body felt as though it were running wild on its own. His instincts were whispering to take the soft, sweet female body pinned beneath him right now. But his reason was screaming with every fiber of his being that he absolutely must not.

He shook his head and bit down hard on his lower lip. When the metallic, coppery taste of blood filled his mouth and a sharp sting of pain followed, some measure of clarity returned to him. On top of that, some unknown warmth spreading from his back was making the beast that had been raging inside him growl and falter. He didn’t miss that opportunity, reaching out to seize the beast that had broken loose and forcing it back down.

“…Get away from me… Lea… before I… ruin you… completely…”

Murmuring in agony, Luciel drew upon the last remnants of his reason and tried to lift himself off Lea’s body. But he could not. The hand she had placed on his back began to stroke him — slowly, but gently.

“It’s all right. I’ll make you better soon, so trust me.”

For a moment, Luciel held his breath at her words.

It’s all right…? Trust her…?

In that instant, he understood. What it feels like when words are spoken from the heart. And simultaneously, a powerful shock struck him squarely in the mind. It felt as though something deeply engraved in his heart was coming undone.

Those words he had heard in his young days had not been sincere.

Why hadn’t he known…? Luciel was struck speechless by a truth that had arrived so suddenly. As though under a spell, he had believed that person’s words without a shred of doubt. In the end, unable to let go of that single small scrap of memory, he had lost so many people. People like Rosia.

“…..”

Perhaps because the shock was too great — the agonizing pain of the aphrodisiac, which moments ago had felt as though it would kill him, was now entirely absent. Luciel, who had been staring blankly into the air, slowly lowered his gaze to the girl who had led him to this realization. And when he met those clear, unclouded, utterly guileless eyes, he found himself unable to look away. He had known she was beautiful. But he hadn’t known she was beautiful enough to make it impossible to tear his gaze away.

Thump… thump…

His long-silent heart began to beat slowly, and the deep, empty place within it started to fill again with a new emotion. At the same time, Luciel’s body slowly crumpled.

****

Carefully pushing aside Luciel’s unconscious body and rising to her feet, Lea let out a sigh. Her split, swollen lips stung quite a bit.

“Honestly, leaving me in this state… No. I was careless. There’s no one else to blame.”

Shaking her head, she looked down at Luciel lying there unconscious. From the start, her plan had been to use the detoxification ability of the ring Abel had given her to save him. So while stroking his back, she had activated the ring’s antidote function. The ring had slowly neutralized the aphrodisiac that had been controlling his body, and his body — which had endured prolonged suffering — had fallen into a deep sleep of its own accord, beyond its owner’s will, in order to recover. All of this had been possible only because he had held on without completely losing his reason.

“You held on well. Well done.”

Bending down, she gave the sleeping Luciel a few gentle pats on the head, then lifted her skirt and peeled off the recording orb she had affixed to the inside of her dress. It was something Razen had prepared at her request.

“All right, time to carry out the rest of the plan. He said I just need to tap it like this, right?”

Turning the recording orb this way and that, Lea lifted a finger and gave it a light tap. Light emanated from the orb as lewd sounds began to flow out of it. A man’s panting and a woman’s moans were recorded in vivid detail — anyone hearing only the sounds would have had every reason to believe she and Luciel were being intimate. After listening to confirm the sounds for a moment, she sighed and muttered to herself.

“Somehow I feel like I’ve been hearing this sort of sound a lot lately… I’m still a minor, you know…”

Grumbling, she set the recording orb on the bed, then attempted to teleport while carrying Luciel to Razen’s office. That is, until she happened to catch a glimpse of herself in the mirror column beside the bed. Upon seeing her own reflection with her own two eyes, she forgot all about teleporting and froze completely on the spot. The sounds from the recording orb were truly the least of her problems.

She had known her lips were swollen and split. That wasn’t the issue. The front of her dress was torn, threatening to expose her chest, and her neck and the upper part of her chest were dotted here and there with marks from all the biting and sucking. Most of all, her snow-white neck — which he had bitten and ravished first — bore a deep purple bruise, large and vivid, unmistakably marked. Lea’s lips trembled with shock as she saw on her own body the kind of love bite she had only ever heard of.

“….Luciel… just you wait until you wake up…”

Lea smiled brightly as she glared down at Luciel, lying unconscious in her arms. Vowing that she would collect this debt with interest no matter what, she twisted the ring on her right hand. Simultaneously, a silver magic circle spread wide beneath both of them, and moments later, there was nothing left in the room but the recording orb.