My Ex-Husband Came Back Crazy - Chapter 49
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Episode 49
Chapter 5. Secrets (6)
His lips parted slowly, and his teeth gleamed white between them.
As heat bloomed beneath his narrowed eyes, Celia found herself staring at that face, her own mouth falling open.
“Why are you laughing?”
This was not a face he should have shown to someone he’d been angry at moments before.
Lucius planted his knee and pushed himself up. His powerful thighs and knees shifted first, then his long fingers suddenly wrapped around her waist, pulling her close.
“You—!”
The vibration of his laughter traveled through her completely. Like a tightly wound coil suddenly unspooling all at once.
“How do I put it.”
He spoke between breaths, steadying himself.
“Hearing what you said made all my worries disappear.”
His voice emerged rough, scratched from laughter, with an edge that tickled something inside her. Your comfort helped, he said briefly.
Seeing his eyes crinkle, her chest couldn’t settle—it rippled shallowly instead.
“…Enough of that. Tell me now. Who did this to you?”
“You’re curious?”
“Of course I’m curious!”
She alone could wound this man.
It was a truth as immutable and eternal as the turning of seasons.
He smiled, fresh and bright as a man who had just reclaimed his rightful season. Moisture gleamed beneath his lashes, and his gaze fell upon her face with a warmth that came late but arrived nonetheless.
“All the concern you show me makes me happy.”
Insane man.
The next instant, her body lifted lightly from the ground. Her feet kicked uselessly at empty air.
When Celia reflexively wrapped her arms around his thick neck, he walked without hesitation and set her down on the table.
The moment her hips touched the surface, stability returned. Their eyes met at equal height.
“But promise me. Don’t be angry. Don’t rage. I’d prefer it if you didn’t waste such deep feeling on a wound that means so little.”
Speaking so eloquently.
Yet at the mention that he would still speak, a corner of her parched heart, as if belatedly, absorbed moisture and softened.
“That’s… something I’ll decide.”
Now that they were at the same height, she could see everything.
All the wounds he’d tried to hide came into sharp focus. The gash across his cheek, the split at the corner of his mouth, the bruise still fading—each one she traced made her eyes burn a fierce blue.
“Someone laid hands on you.”
Who could possibly dare mark the young lord’s face like this? She waited for his words, but an entirely unexpected name emerged.
“My father.”
“What?”
Lucius did not let that brief question slip past him.
He leaned his cheek slowly into her palm, his eyes—those of a domesticated beast grown docile—gazing up at her with quiet submission.
“Alzner did this.”
Celia forgot that his face was even resting against her hand, her eyes not blinking.
Violence was foreign to her.
If not for an incident like Dunlowe Hallow, she would never have confronted physical violence this closely.
‘The Duke of Windmere throwing common punches?’
Her own father, Edmund Brickwell, had never raised his hand.
There were times when punishments suited to his standards fell harshly, but he never lifted a hand against his children’s bodies—and so Celia was genuinely shocked.
“Are you—are you insane?!”
That Lucius Windmere had been struck by his father.
But why? For what purpose?
Questions multiplied.
So many that Celia pressed them all down and away. What mattered now wasn’t the circumstances—it was this ugly mark left on his cheek.
“An aging man lays hands on his only son’s face? No, before that. Is it sane to use violence like this on your own child?”
Her distorted face refused to turn from him, her eyes fixed and her hands repeatedly tracing his wounds.
With each touch of her fingers, laughter he couldn’t hide accumulated at the corners of his eyes.
“Does he think he can break a grown child into submission through violence? Is that what he thinks he’s doing?”
“Exactly.”
Lucius caught her every word, and as he did, he gently lowered his long lashes while keeping her wrist encircled in his grip.
Even as her clumsy touch moved across his wound, strangely it didn’t hurt.
The helplessness that had weighed on him these past days, the shame of being pressed into the ground, the self-loathing that had scraped through him roughly—all of it lost its strength in the face of her rage on his behalf.
“From now on, don’t stay silent either.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. Next time, push back properly. Tell him not to. Honestly, he’s an old man… actually, his body will fail faster than yours, he’ll die sooner… your father can’t overpower you through strength.”
“You’re right. I think so too.”
“Good.”
She bit her tongue several times over difficult word choices, sneaking a glance at his expression. She didn’t need to do that.
In Lucius’s rumpled, creased inner world, a small tickle bloomed.
His simple emotion toward her had grown increasingly distinct. The boundary had collapsed, and between those lines something entirely different had taken root. Reverence and hunger, relief and obsession invaded each other’s territory, until now it had become a shape that no single name could contain.
“Celia.”
Lucius pressed his lips to her cheek.
“I’m really fine.”
“Then… I’m glad.”
“You’re here beside me. How could I not be fine?”
Moonlight caught in his lashes. Beneath the scattered light, his eyes—which had held so many churning emotions—now seemed to melt, beautiful in their clarity and depth.
Celia pressed her lips firmly closed. When he looked at her like this, something inside her stirred.
Just as the thought emerged that she would never grow accustomed to those eyes, no matter how much time passed, Lucius touched beneath her chin with his fingertip.
“But… Celia.”
Already close, he stepped closer still.
As they pressed together, her breath fell upon his neck. Lucius braced himself against the table behind her hips and leaned in with care.
Breath tangled.
“Ah…”
As Celia’s body continued to tip, she finally tumbled backward onto the table.
The broad desk was more than adequate for her alone. Her snow-white hair spread like thread across its surface. He wetted his lips at the sight of her body, visible through her thin nightgown.
“Aren’t you proud of me?”
His chest pressed firmly against her upper body.
“I wanted to see you but I held back. It was difficult.”
“What does that have to do with anything!”
The warmth she felt at her waist was unmistakable. Celia gasped for breath as she looked up at him, but in moments she flared as rapidly as molten metal plunged into a forge.
“Praise me. I held back quite well.”
“You want to hear that you… did well?”
“Something a little more than that.”
His forehead touched hers. Their breaths had grown so close that it was impossible to tell whose was whose.
“Won’t you give your poor husband a reward?”
What he sought was clear.
Soon his lower lip was caught between her teeth, and the flesh that invaded her mouth answered for her.
“Ah…!”
Lucius’s hands moved without restraint.
Yet his kiss was softer than usual, and strangely she felt a thirst blooming inside her, as though her core kept drying. Peculiar desire rose like water and spilled over.
“Why do you keep—!”
In the brief space where their lips parted, she gasped for breath and brought her fist down hard against his shoulder.
Yet Lucius was not startled at all. Unlike usual, his face had taken on a ruddy flush and his eyes had grown unfocused.
“You shouldn’t have come to find me today.”
He whispered the words against her collarbone.
“This is my room, it’s late, and we’re alone.”
“…”
“I’m sorry to the wife who sought me out with such pure concern… but…”
His breath settled deep against her skin.
Like a beast that has caught the scent of water—urgent, yet held back by the thinnest thread of remaining reason. Desire and restraint flickered between them, trembling in dark and luminous light.
“Tonight I intend to make you cry, to hurt you.”
Crunch. Her hands pressed hard against his arms.
“You’re not… sane.”
“There’s only you in my head. You’re right—I’m not sane.”
His eyes gleamed with wild intent as he exhaled softly between her fingers.
“If you don’t run now, I really will do it.”
He always taught her things she hadn’t wanted to know.
This time would be no different.
This man, who had left her with unforgettable memories—he was about to cover her with another.
“Aren’t you running?”
Don’t be ridiculous. Running.
That much had sufficed, once before him.
“Don’t you think about running away in the future either.”
Heat or anger—she couldn’t tell which—swept over her body and raised her temperature. Beneath his unwavering gaze, she burned, and it didn’t take long before her arms wrapped around his neck.
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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