The Wrong Answer

She could not handle the Emperor’s body carelessly, and with tension coiled tight in her limbs, her hand fumbled at the front of his trousers for a long while.

After tugging the waistband down slightly, she finally managed to slip her hand inside.

The moment her fingers made contact with the thick pillar of flesh, she flinched.

Each brush seemed to alter its volume, and the more she touched it, the harder it grew.

It felt like something that should never have been attached to a human body.

Brick-like and unyielding, it snagged against the thigh of his trousers and refused to come free.

As she struggled cautiously with it, uncertain whether she was handling or fighting it, something wet—bathwater or sweat—trickled down her spine.

“Are you enjoying this?”

“N-No, Your Majesty. My hands are simply unskilled.”

As her unruly heartbeat refused to calm, he reached up and stroked Chloe’s chin.

“I told you to wash me, not to fondle me.”

His sadistic gaze lingered stubbornly on her flustered expression.

He observed without missing a detail the redness blooming beneath her eyes and the heat rising to her earlobes.

It was as though he were watching how a captured prey would meet its final end.

“If you mean to arouse me, at least do it properly.”

The weight she had barely grasped in her hand was impossible to manage.

She held its base with one hand, but the thickness forced her thumb and middle finger far apart.

She could barely encircle half of it, and the remaining length loomed upward menacingly.

With her other hand, she cupped the tip.

As though mocking her audacity, it bobbed up and down.

The shape perched atop the long shaft was nearly the size of her clenched fist.

Could something of this size truly enter her body?

The memory of what had happened in the hunting grounds forest felt less like reality and more like a distant dream.

Even her life before returning from death felt hazy.

She only remembered that when she had once desperately tried to serve Hector, it had been unbearably large.

But feeling its form so vividly in her hand was something entirely different.

Bath attendance.

This was the duty of a maid who assisted with bathing.

No matter how much she steeled herself, she could not focus solely on her task.

Biting her reddened lips, Chloe began moving her hand up and down the shaft.

Its outer surface was as smooth as a ripple on water.

Yet beneath the thin skin, the ridges felt as vicious as a weapon.

Dark blue veins bulged prominently, and a tendon rising from below braced it stiffly upright.

The more she moved her hand, the more it changed in size.

It seemed as though the blood rushing through it might cause it to burst.

Hector’s face remained cold and frozen like a lake in winter, while below, he burned like fire.

She could clearly feel its heavy pulse throbbing in her palm.

When she pushed upward from the base, something leaked from the small opening at the tip.

At the center of the obscene triangular head was a shallow indentation, and she happened to be rubbing that very spot with her thumb.

The thick fluid did not easily dissolve into the bathwater.

Her thumb grew slick.

It was the secretion meant to ease entry into a woman’s narrow passage.

Grasping a man’s member required tremendous mental fortitude.

She could hardly tell whether she was cleaning it or merely handling it.

“Please… no more.”

Nausea churned in her stomach.

The alcohol she had hastily swallowed continued to burn within her belly.

Her heart raced, and her head spun.

The aggressively aroused center of his body seemed to aim directly at her.

In truth, she had sensed it from the beginning.

He had not ordered her to attend his bath merely to humiliate her.

And she had known how foolish it was to try to evade this moment.

Confronting a reality she refused to accept only deepened her misery.

“If you are finished washing, come up and sit.”

He tilted his chin lightly, as though it were the natural next step.

Chloe rose reluctantly, like livestock being led to slaughter.

Kneeling in the water, she removed her undergarments.

Her soaked clothing fell heavily onto the tile outside the bath.

She approached him on her knees, but her courage faltered.

If the hardship of accepting this in her previous life had been so severe that she still remembered it, how could she not hesitate now?

The dark, crimson weapon looked even larger, refracted through water.

She simply could not bring herself to comply.

Though she did not know what calamity might strike if she refused the Emperor’s command, she shook her head.

“I’m sorry. I cannot.”

Her wet lashes made her appear as though she were weeping.

With her pale thighs exposed and trapped in her predicament, she looked pitiable beyond measure.

He inhaled through his nose.

After a brief, precarious pause, he spoke in a heavy, sunken tone.

“Very well. If that is the case, spread yourself. Do that much, and I will let it pass.”

His gaze told her exactly what he meant.

His eyes briefly indicated her most intimate place.

There was no mercy left in the furrow of his brow.

Chloe moved as slowly as an earthworm, and displeased, he seized her waist and lifted her onto the rim of the bath.

Water dripped noisily from her sodden maid uniform.

She wanted to die.

She felt so wretched she wished to bite her tongue.

Yet she changed her mind.

Having witnessed countless deaths and died once herself, her desire to live overpowered all else.

With a trembling breath laced with tears, she slowly lifted her skirt.

Without undergarments, her hips were slender as bare poplar branches.

Reluctantly, painfully, her legs parted, revealing a red seam.

Her damp inner flesh flushed faintly.

Even summoning the smallest grain of courage, she could not fully reveal herself.

It was all she could do to open even slightly.

“More.”

He brushed the mound of her flesh with the back of his hand.

Though his touch feigned gentleness, his raised brow betrayed his displeasure at her passivity.

No matter how he pressed, she found it nearly impossible to comply.

Whether from revulsion or fear, her knees no longer felt like her own.

His fierce glare poured down upon her.

Desperate, she forced her legs wider.

She trembled as she opened her knees a little further.

Knowing that such modest exposure would not appease him, she brought her hand between her thighs.

Shaping her legs like butterfly wings, she used her fingertips to part her delicate folds.

The red petals quivered as though luring a mate.

Though she had opened herself, the part beyond her control moved of its own accord.

The entrance, precariously framed by her pale nails, glistened with clear moisture.

Her small lower lips fluttered hungrily.

Chloe felt as though her limits were being tested.

Believing that enduring this much would suffice, she summoned every last ounce of strength.

The mental strain forced a dizzying, heated breath from her lips.

“Ha… may we not finish the bath now?”

“Why?”

“I wish to withdraw.”

She longed to evaporate into steam.

The sight of herself, lifting her tattered maid’s skirt and exposing her most private place, felt utterly pathetic.

Permission did not come.

After staring at her exposed flesh for a long moment, Hector bared his teeth like a wolf.

“Withdraw? That is the wrong answer.”

Tears welled in her eyes.

She knew exactly what he wanted.

In her desperation, she had said she wished to leave, but all her efforts had been in vain.

With his lips alone, he mouthed the word ‘why’ again.

It was a question with a single correct answer.

Her hand slipped as she sobbed.

The entrance closed faintly, leaving only a trace of its opening.

“T-To the bed…”

To withdraw was wrong.

The correct answer was to say she wished to go to the bed with him.

Ignoring her desperate struggle, Hector wore a lethally beautiful expression.

Rising from the water, his body gleamed brilliantly beneath the sheen of droplets.

“You are quite adorable.”

He exhaled lightly through his teeth, clearly amused by toying with such easy prey.

Hector turned her around without delay.

He pressed her hands against the rim of the bath and aligned himself behind her.

Though he had forced the words of invitation to the bed from her lips, he did not grant her that mercy.

The place where their bodies would join remained the very bath where she had exposed herself.

Cruel to the end, he paid no heed to her condition.

After their first encounter had left her sore, her most intimate place was still swollen.

Yet he showed no concern and pressed himself forward without hesitation.

He did not even touch her below beforehand.

Unlike the previous time, when he had prepared her with his hand, he skipped that entirely.

Though this spared her a certain humiliation, it left her far less ready.

Hector parted her with a degree of impatience.

Rubbing his thick length between the valley of her hips, he aligned himself with the entrance of the moist depths.