Adagio - Chapter 3

“Light… Please turn off the lights.”

“Okay.”

Even though his answer came out immediately, he still continued to take off her robes. Ha-young became nervous when her bare shoulder came exposed and the cold air clung to her skin. She then raised her eyes and spoke in a firmer tone.

“Turn off the light, Hus… band.”

The end of Ha-young’s words trailed off as soon as she met his eyes, which were staring down at her. She momentarily forgot about her restless mind. Though the room was bright, only one thought occupied her mind, ‘If only it were a little brighter.’

She wondered what emotions were shrouded in those dark eyes of his. It felt like he was observing her as if he wanted to unearth something.

‘What?’

Just when she was processing this, a big hand clasped her chin. A shadow suddenly covered her sight and his moist breath brushed against her lips. As she sat there with her eyes wide open, her nanny’s voice came into her head.

“Everything has a process. The same is true for intercourse between a man and a woman.”

A few days prior to the wedding day, Ha-young had learned about the process of union between a man and a woman from her nanny.

“There’s a process for kissing and caressing. Even if your husband touches Milady’s body and kisses you, you should not consider it to be improper. And…”

She closed her eyes tightly when she felt a hot, slippery piece of flesh slide in through her lips. Then, everything disappeared, even the voice of her nanny ceased to exist, her thoughts had all blanked out.

His tongue majestically invaded her and swept the insides of her mouth. She had imagined a kiss to be a shy contact. This primitive act of mixing saliva was quite embarrassing.

A strange sound leaked from her nose as the tip of his tongue pressed and slid against the roof of her mouth. It was chilling. The strange sensation felt uncomfortable.

The tongue stirring the inside of her mouth moved as if it were searching for something. As soon as their tongues touched, she felt an instinctive fear, like a herbivore being chased by a wild beast. He tenaciously followed her evading little tongue. His tongue finally caught hers and entwined with it, rubbing against the sensitive bumps.

“Heuk…….”

The sound that escaped out of her nose was louder than before. After sucking her lips as if wanting to swallow them whole, he finally withdrew his lips.

“It’s not done like that.”

His voice was tinged with laughter. But Ha-young was not in the spirit to notice it. She answered breathlessly.

“What?”

“Did you not learn what a wedding night is?”

His voice snuck through one ear and filtered out the other and the only word she managed to retain was “learn”. But the word invoked a bullheadedness in her as she couldn’t bear to hear that she didn’t “learn” properly before the marriage.

“I did learn.”

“Then you have to do it right.”

Mu-eun whispered. Their lips were so close that they could feel each other’s breaths.

“Open your mouth.”

Ha-young opened her lips.

“Pull out your tongue.”

She slightly stuck her tongue out between her lips as if she were asking, ‘Like this?’ Mu-eun’s eyes narrowed. The contrast between her previous self firmly expressing her views and her current clumsy behavior greatly aroused him.

He frowned as he swallowed her tiny, almost hidden tongue at once. His lower member began swelling with tingling desire.

He was determined to leave if she showed any signs of rejection. If she didn’t want to be his woman, then he wouldn’t touch her at all. He had enough of all the rejections. He was sick of having everything snatched away from him and being shoved out the fence.

‘But can I really let her go?’

At this moment, he was unsure if he could ever step back from this person without any lingering regrets. It would’ve been better if he did not know the feeling of this small, soft woman who seemed to break at the slightest force.

He was slowly getting intoxicated by the feeling as he bit and sucked her soft lips. The sound of her ragged breaths, mixed with occasional gasps, enthralled him completely. ‘Is the flare in my heart driven by my roused body? Or is my feverish state a result of the already kindled fire blazing in my heart?’

Wet noises and moans echoed throughout the room. Ha-young’s face burned up in embarrassment listening to these obscene sounds. They stung her just like the one time when she was sunburned.

She only had to open her mouth, yet it brought about a feeling of being defenselessly nude. It was amazing how the man’s tongue swirled inside her mouth and did not make her uncomfortable, rather it felt as if it belonged there in the first place.

‘It’s just… it’s just kissing.’

She couldn’t believe that the act could be so lewd. If she was unaware and uneducated in the acts of connubial rites and acts, she would for sure have believed that this act alone was enough to make her conceive.

Her senses were heightened due to her tightly shutting her eyes. Ha-young didn’t realize that her body was leaning back. It was only when her back touched the bedding did she realize this. She felt the weight of the man pressing against her body.

He did not cease the deep kisses and continued to greedily covet her lips. And before she knew it, the kisses slowly began to migrate from her lips to her cheeks, from her cheeks to her eyes, and finally from her eyes to her earlobe.

She unconsciously tilted her upwards as he pressed deeper into her neck and planted kisses there. The action wasn’t deliberate, rather it was her body responding to the stimulus all by itself.

All of a sudden, the weight pressing against her body disappeared, leaving her empty and wanting, yearning for the body temperature. She could hear the sound of a cool draught moving around her.

It was hard for her to open her tightly shut eyes. The lantern flickered a lot. She turned her head, but what came in her sight was a bare chest of a man. She quickly averted her gaze by turning her head. She realized that it wasn’t the wind that she heard, but it was the muted rustle of Mu-eun’s clothes when he took them off. The sight left her breathless and panting.

Feeling the weight press onto her once again, she gasped in surprise. His hand swept up from the side and pulled at the knotted string. The tightness around her chest loosened as he undid the strings.

“Husband.”

“Yes.”

“It’s too… too bright.”

“Is that so?”

His voice was so low that it was as if he was whispering.

“But it’ll be hard to see.”

Mu-eun wanted to see her in elaborate detail: the parting of her ruddy lips, her breathy gasps, her quivering eyes, and her fluttering eyelashes as she did her best to close her eyes. He wanted to capture them all, without missing a minute detail.

No, what he really wanted was to confirm something else. He wanted to know if his bride had truly accepted him. Maybe it was just that she was feeling shy in such an unfamiliar experience, or maybe she was actually enduring it even though she found it disgusting.

He was already disappointed that the room was a little dark. If he also had to turn off the little lantern, then wouldn’t he miss the chance to observe her expressions.

‘Can you not see well with your eyes?’

Ha-young incorrectly interpreted his words. The scar running through his upper eyelid came to her mind.

 ‘You hurt your eyes. But the stories I’ve heard…’

Ah! She sighed.

‘I guess the elders don’t know.’

If it wasn’t obvious, it might be difficult to guess the person’s affliction if the person decides to hide it.

The manservant of her maiden house was a blind person. He said that he could only distinguish between darkness and bright light. However, he looked completely fine and moved about no differently from ordinary people. So the people who meet him for the first time would find it difficult to grasp the idea that he was actually blind.

Since he was born into a martial family, his weak eyesight must be a great weakness to him.

‘Did his weakness impact him so much that he went astray?’

While Ha-young was thinking of an understandable reason behind the bad rumors about him, a layer of her underskirt was pulled down and taken off. Then another layer was removed. Now that it had come to this stage, she couldn’t ask him to turn off the lights anymore. And so, she was left breathing tensely.

Mu-eun grumbled while trying to untie the third knot.

“Why is it tied so tightly like this?”

His grumbling voice felt friendly, making Ha-young chuckle at him. His hand paused and then moved again.

“You shouldn’t laugh when you see someone struggling.”

Though he spoke in a curt tone, there was a brilliant luster in his eyes. He grabbed her inner skirt and pulled it down. And under his strong grip, the underskirt was roughly pulled down along with the cloth that covered her chest, revealing her bosom hidden underneath the layers. They swayed as they were roughly exposed.

Ha-young’s body shrank in surprise. She reflexively covered her chest with her arms. However, he held her wrist and spread her arms to the sides. She could feel his gaze looking down at her chest.

‘Because you said you couldn’t see well…’

Mumbling this to herself, she suppressed her shame. Still, the situation was very embarrassing. She closed her eyes, feeling as if she had become a pheasant with only its head buried in a sheaf of rice.