My Ex-Husband Came Back Crazy - Chapter 8

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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 8
Chapter 1. Fracture (8)
He’d fallen from his horse and smashed his head against a boulder, or so they said.
It was clear that more than just his memory had been damaged in the impact—something else had broken thoroughly.
“Endure. You’re not the only one suffering through this.”
Those were Lucius’s words on the night they’d spent their First Night together, forced as it was.
The Lucius that Celia knew was a man indifferent to carnal desire.
Though men were said to be creatures who couldn’t manage their lower appetites through reason alone, Lucius seemed to exist entirely outside that rank.
She’d never heard whispers of secret affairs, nor did he summon women to the house or keep a mistress nearby as other men did. Even Celia, who’d once been certain he must have a lover, had abandoned such speculation after more than a year of marriage passed without incident.
He maintained a disciplined routine—leaving at set times, returning at set times—and openly despised the disreputable men whose names she’d even heard mentioned, his fastidious disdain unmistakable.
Despite his striking beauty, there was something austere in his gaze, a certain restraint that commanded trust even as it irritated her.
It had been a mercy, at least.
He’d played the role of scoundrel to her in many ways, but in this one matter, he’d never acted like one.
‘Or perhaps he simply found her repulsive, that was all.’
And yet, now—this contact—she couldn’t deny it was an event shocking enough to unravel her entirely.
Speechless, she tightened control over her own gaze.
“Hmm? Celia.”
He made a sound like a starving beast scratching at its throat—a voice so low and weighty it seemed to burrow down to the bone.
“……There’s no way I would permit this.”
In her confusion, strange sounds filled her ears and her mind went white. Yet despite her refusal, his eyes curved gently, softly.
“Didn’t we always do this?”
“No…… we didn’t. We never did anything so reckless, so thoughtless.”
It was summer, and beneath her thin robe his body showed shadowy and indistinct. Through the loosely rolled sleeves, the veins of his thick arms lay prominent and visible.
“That’s strange. I must have been mad before I lost my memory.”
He laughed low—a short, sharp sound—his teeth gleaming, his red tongue flashing in the dim light.
“How could I have borne it? With such a beautiful wife before me, how could I not have kissed you? How could I not have desired you?”
Her legs gave way beneath her without warning.
As her knees buckled, his hand came beneath her belly. Her damp hair spilled across his body as she lost her footing.
Her weight pressed against his arms as she barely kept her legs from collapsing entirely. When she drew a deep breath, he stiffened. The muscles along his forearm twitched and released in automatic response.
He lifted her lightly, straightening her bent knees with ease.
Unaware that her weightless body was leaning naturally against him, Celia let out a small cry, her breathing already quickening.
“Why do you keep saying such things?”
Celia had never been treated with particular gentleness by Lucius, yet he maintained his fundamental courtesy all the same. He never spoke words meant to embarrass others, he carried himself with propriety, and he avoided anything vulgar or base.
It meant he was a man who should never have uttered such crude language.
As her shoulders trembled in his embrace, Lucius hurriedly caught her chin and tilted her face up toward him. At the sight of her flushed cheeks, red as a fully opened flower, his eyes reddened and he laughed.
“Because I can’t hold someone who says they hate this. I’m seducing you so that you might come to feel the same way I do.”
The cord loosely knotted at her waist came undone, and the robe fell open. Between the parted edges, her unblemished skin was revealed.
Her heart seemed to stop somewhere near her throat, then leap irregularly in her chest.
“I don’t remember anything, but while I was on death’s doorstep, I dreamed. Dreams of you.”
Between his clear, tranquil gaze, red light spread like a crack in glass. The composed, fastidious face that only she had ever disturbed was now shadowed with a wordless hunger.
His eyelids lowered slowly over her, then lifted once more.
“I kept longing for something like a lake on a hot summer’s day. I opened my eyes, returned from that sweet dream to this confused reality, and yet—I searched only for that one thing. And then you walked in.”
Lucius moved, his hands still kept above the neckline of her robe.
“I realized then—you were the master of my desire all along. I knew it at once.”
The robe’s collar slipped down, revealing the curve of her collarbone and the quiet line of her shoulder beyond.
In the dim firelight, what lay beneath was obscured just enough to invite darker imaginings.
His hands, which had lingered near her neck and shoulders, curved inward. He wound her damp hair between his fingers, strand by strand, then flicked his fingers to let them graze her wet skin.
At that electric touch, she lifted her leg reflexively and kicked sharply against his shin. Lucius caught his breath, his back arching sharply.
The hand that had begun to slip beneath her robe stopped abruptly. Instead, he lowered his forehead to her nape, his brow resting against her shoulder. His breath came in heavy waves; he remained there quietly, the weight of him unbearably still as his breathing slowly steadied.
He kept his forehead pressed to her shoulder as he tilted his head, his face shifting beyond her shoulder as his jaw gently grazed her collarbone. His eyes lifted to meet her gaze. The angle was slanted, oblique.
Between their skins there remained only the distance of a single breath.
“This is merely my dirty fantasy, which I apologize for—indecent as it is to harbor toward my innocent-seeming wife. Celia.”
At some point, his hand had risen. He brushed her cheek with his thumb and laughed—a low, long sound like the resonance of a viola, spreading across her skin.
“I think you must have worn this very expression on the night we first lay together.”
At those words, Celia shoved him hard and pulled away.
She felt his movements falter behind her, but she ignored them, walking with long, quick strides.
‘Is there anything heavy here? Anything large and dangerous? If I hit that head one more time, would his wits finally return to normal?’
Already half out of her mind, Celia swept her gaze across her own familiar room as though seeing it for the first time. Objects blurred past her vision, but nothing registered.
The room was far too dark.
As she moved away from the only source of light, everything plunged into shadow. Only a faint, lingering glow cast long on the wall remained.
And relying on that pale light, as though searching for a lost child, Celia turned—and her eyes met those of her reflection in the mirror.
In that large, elongated mirror leaning against the wall by the window, a single candle created a flickering, fragile light that cut across her face in a long, wavering line.
Heat bloomed across both her cheeks.
They were red.
Unmistakably, undeniably so—shame incarnate.
‘This can’t be happening!’
Celia turned away from her reflection in the mirror as though fleeing from herself.
Her lips trembled slightly. She forced out a breath as though nothing were amiss and made her excuse.
It was only the candle flame, blazing like the sunset, casting its glow.
Because she was unfamiliar with this kind of contact, because touching Lucius disgusted her—that anger had simply manifested on her face.
“Celia.”
While she floundered, Lucius came to stand behind her.
“Show me your face.”
His muscled arm slipped beneath her elbow. It wrapped fully around her back, his arms crossing in front of her belly. His heartbeat sounded directly beside her ear—a shamelessly intimate position.
“Since I remember nothing, I need to fill the void with new memories. Did you always wear such an expression before?”
She could have sworn absolutely that the answer was no.
Whatever he was imagining, their consummation had been nothing but a terrible obligation, pressured by those in power above them.
Though it had ended in a lie, it was a night she couldn’t forget—their First Night—and she hadn’t collapsed like this then.
On that day when she’d entered the bedroom to face him, driven there by the sharp eyes of the clergy and the pointing fingers of her elders, she’d cursed him and hurled objects to keep him away. A small Silver Knife meant for cutting cheese had struck Lucius on the shoulder, leaving him wounded.
The scar that remained on his shoulder, now visible through the gap of his loosened robe, was the sole remaining trace of that day.
“Stop, stop touching me like that.”
She pushed his treacherously wavering arm away and staggered back.
The wool-lined Slipper’s heel dragged long behind her as she retreated. He simply lengthened his stride and came toward her again.
“If we’ve known each other since childhood and ended up married like this, we must have promised each other a Betrothal quite some time ago, mustn’t we?”
Each time she stepped backward, her hair swung through the air, striking nothing.
But that hair, drifting through empty space, soon settled into his hands. He captured that pristine whiteness—different from an old man’s gray—and lowered his head with ceremony to kiss its ends.
Like a gentleman extending courtesy to a lady, he bowed slightly and brought his red lips to it with care.
“Or perhaps we were childhood friends who knew nothing of each other’s gender, who ran barefoot through the Fields together, until one day our eyes met and we began to desire each other.”
But the courteous hands of that gentleman soon transformed into those of an ignorant man, moving to possess her. His hand gripping her arm climbed dully upward.
“What was I like, in that moment when I desired a woman I’d known for so long?”
Holding her arm, his hand caressed the translucent skin, then brought his lips to it.
“Was my first kiss stolen in secret, like playing with fire, away from all eyes? Or did I, unable to restrain myself against your innocent ignorance, surrender to my desire?”
Her mind melts under his hot breath.
The air grew thick and heavy with desire in an instant, laden by the eyes of a man possessed by longing.

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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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