Roxana
Chapter 94
Chapter 94
How to Protect the Female Lead’s Older Brother
Chapter 94
How foolish of me to be so focused on threatening Pandora that I didn’t even notice someone else approaching.
Granted, both Cassis and Orca were people whose presence was virtually undetectable.
Earlier, when I swept away Pandora’s beasts, I thought I had felt a fleeting gaze on me—it turned out it wasn’t just my imagination after all.
Cassis stood motionless, staring at Roxana with an unreadable look in his eyes.
It was a strange gaze—at once sunken in bottomless, murky darkness, yet piercing with an inscrutable, vivid brilliance.
When Cassis finally took a step forward, Roxana felt a pang of guilt and blurted out an excuse.
“I didn’t start it.”
Yet Cassis did not utter a single word about what she had done; he simply reached out for her.
The moment warmth touched her body, her field of vision lifted abruptly.
Cassis had scooped Roxana into his arms. Taken by surprise, she found herself swept against his chest, her hand instinctively resting on his shoulder.
“Pandora Hyperion.”
Cassis then turned to look at Pandora and spoke.
“Out of respect for our faith with Hyperion, I have treated you with utmost courtesy until now. But since you have forsaken that trust and threatened my person, from this moment forth, I shall consider you an unwelcome intruder.”
Pandora still wore a dazed expression, as if lingering in the shock of what had just transpired.
As such, Cassis’s words didn’t seem to fully register with her.
“I will not overlook the fact that you summoned beasts recklessly within Pedelian’s walls; you will be held accountable.”
At his call, subordinates who had been standing at the garden entrance stepped forward.
“Confiscate Pandora Hyperion’s beasts once more and confine her to her quarters until further notice.”
“Yes, my lord.”
After delivering the order in a thoroughly chilling tone, Cassis departed the garden with Roxana.
As they headed toward the annex, a pure energy flowed into her from where their bodies touched.
“The poison butterflies may have strained your body, so we are returning straight to the room.”
Roxana blinked as she listened to the low voice resonating by her ear.
It seemed Cassis had no intention of blaming her for what had happened.
Judging from what he had said to Pandora, he already seemed aware that Pandora was the one who had brought out the beasts to threaten her first.
Could he have been in the garden from the moment Pandora summoned them?
If so, that meant he had heard every single word Roxana said.
No wonder he had looked at her with such an indescribable expression earlier.
If that was the case, everything made sense.
The warmth between their pressed bodies grew gradually hotter.
Roxana could hardly tell whether the heat came from Cassis or had begun to ignite within herself.
The words Cassis had spoken in the garden replayed in her ears once more.
“Out of respect for our faith with Hyperion, I have treated you with utmost courtesy until now. But since you have forsaken that trust and threatened my person, from this moment forth, I shall consider you an unwelcome intruder.”
My person. He had unmistakably referred to her as his person.
A ticklish warmth bloomed around her heart. Perhaps because she had received so much pure qi from Cassis lately, wielding the poison butterflies to this extent hadn’t taken any toll on her at all.
Or perhaps it was because her body had been thoroughly—almost excessively—restored just last night.
“If you’re really that worried…”
At last, Roxana parted her lips and whispered into Cassis’s ear in a voice sweet as sugar.
“You can just treat me. Like you did last night.”
In an instant, Cassis’s steps ground to a halt. A heartbeat later, their gazes collided at close range.
Seeing the terrible thirst and desire pooling in his eyes, Roxana smiled exquisitely.
It seemed she wasn’t the only one who regretted what had been left unfinished last night.
The moment they entered the room and the door shut behind them, Roxana lightly pecked Cassis’s jaw, like a bird with its beak.
As if coaxing him for something.
In answer, Cassis devoured Roxana’s red lips without a second’s hesitation.
Inhales and exhales tangled together. The wet, friction-filled sounds of their entwining hot tongues stimulated her ears.
Heat flared through her body all at once. In the blink of an eye, Roxana found herself lying back against the soft bed.
Cassis’s firm body pressed down over hers.
“Mm…”
A moan like the purr of a cat slipped from Roxana’s throat.
The hands that had rested on Cassis’s shoulders slid down his back. The arm wrapping around Roxana’s slender waist tightened with even greater force.
As if the reins that had held him back were finally snapped, Cassis fervently devoured the person before him.
As he untied her neatly fastened collar and buried his lips into her exposed white nape, a soft whimper filled his ears.
Even that sound was so terribly fragrant and sweet that it threatened to intoxicate him completely.
In this moment, instinct overwhelmed everything else. Like a predator marking its mate, Cassis left dense traces all along her neck.
Marks he had etched into her skin just last night still remained there. Beside them, he layered new ones.
His hot lips trailed past her collarbone, drifting steadily lower. His large hand covered the swell of her breast.
“Ah, Cassis…”
When he took the sweet, ripe peak into his mouth as if lured by its fragrance, a feverish voice whispered his name.
Hands that could not be told whether they were pushing him away or pulling him closer tangled gently into his hair.
“Say what you said earlier again.”
Cassis shifted his hand, stroking down Roxana’s legs that wrapped around his waist.
The fabric caught in his grip was pushed downward, exposing her pale, bare skin.
“That I’m yours?”
Lying with her golden hair splayed across the white sheets, half-exposing her dazzling form, Roxana was breathtakingly beautiful to the point of heartache.
Her flushed eyes, hazy with heat, and her glistening lips seemed stained with the petal-juice of flowers.
Red eyes looked up at him from below.
Yet the vivid brilliance residing within those eyes made it feel as though she were the one looking down on him from above.
“Yes. You’re mine.”
The sweet whisper pierced his ears without a tremor, as if reciting the world’s sole undeniable truth.
Cassis held his breath for a brief moment.
“From the first moment I saw you, you were always mine.”
An emotion akin to pure ecstasy consumed him from head to toe.
Hearing that affirmation once more from Roxana’s own mouth brought him an unbearable, intoxicating satisfaction.
Feeling like a sated beast, Cassis kissed her once again.
All manner of formless sensations poured over them as if to swallow them whole.
What they were doing was an act of insatiable greed—extorting something from one another while surrendering just as completely.
Yielding not a single inch, Cassis and Roxana unleashed their raw desires throughout their entwined embrace, utterly ravaging each other.
It felt as though they were melting into one another from head to toe in the searing heat, fusing into a single entity.
The boundaries separating the two of them slowly dissolved.
They could think of nothing else, as though the person pressed against them was their only universe.
Perhaps that was what one should call the most complete, perfect fulfillment in the world.
Again and again, Cassis and Roxana surrendered themselves to that dizzying sensation.
Ah… In this moment, the world could end right now, and it would be fine.
“Ah, fucking hell…”
Jeremy Agriche muttered a curse straight from the pit of his stomach as he stared at the estate, which had been reduced to little more than a skeletal frame.
His handsome face was crumpled in utter disgust.
It was the hour when the sun sank low. The twilight sky spread a vast, solemn veil overhead in all its majesty.
Stained in crimson dusk, Agriche remained a desolate ruin.
At least the annex where the servants had been evacuated remained intact, but that was all; nothing else was left in Agriche.
Of the people originally in the manor, those who wished to leave left, and those who wished to stay stayed.
Jeremy gathered those who chose to remain in Agriche and began rebuilding.
Yet not a single thing was easy.
A self-mocking sneer broke out now and then at the reality that he, who had contributed to turning Agriche into this state, was now struggling to do the exact opposite.
Especially at dusk like this, watching the collapsed Agriche stripped of its former glory made him feel like the king of a fallen realm.
“Fuck it. It’s a damn mess, but at least being king isn’t so bad.”
Jeremy muttered to himself with a crooked smirk.