Unbeknownst to Me, I am Secretly Dating the Emperor - Chapter 130

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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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Chapter 130
“I love you.”
He was the sort who struggled with sweet words, copying love poems from books to send instead.
This confession was no exception—hardly eloquent.
And yet he was still the Ed I knew.
Even when his words came out blunt, every small gesture, every glance carried a tenderness that was unmistakable.
Ed was a man who made invisible affection tangible, something you could almost hold in your hands.
To love Ed, that was all I needed.
‘Though maybe I just want to believe that.’
“Me too.”
I gave myself entirely to his three-syllable confession without hesitation.
Surrendering myself in order to possess him instead.
I couldn’t help myself—I kissed him while he was still on his knees.
The last thing I saw before our lips met was his eyes, wide and startled.
I laughed to myself at his obvious shock, then closed my eyes and gave myself over to it.
I had no intention of pulling away lightly, the way we usually did.
Ed froze, unable to push me away or pull me closer, simply receiving my kiss in rigid confusion.
I was clumsy relative to my intent, acting with an impulse bordering on recklessness.
So our first real kiss—not just a peck—tasted not of electricity, but of salt from tears.
After pressing our lips together, I gathered my courage and gently bit his lower lip.
Sense slowly returned to Ed, and he began to shift his body backward.
I pursued him as far as he retreated.
‘You’re mine, remember.’
We’d made no agreement, but it was the price he’d pay for deceiving me.
In the chase back and forth, at some point most of my weight settled onto him.
Our tangled bodies toppled to the floor together.
Ed caught me as I fell, absorbing the impact with his own body.
The result was me straddling him, lying forward across his chest.
“Lina.”
Ed called my name in a low, ragged voice—nothing more.
Though our position looked precarious, I had no intention of letting him go.
I cradled his face in both hands and moved to kiss him again, but Ed turned his head away at the last moment, evading my lips.
“So we’re just going to hold hands the entire time we’re together, and only kiss at the wedding?”
“That’s not what I meant—”
My teasing challenge made him fumble for excuses, his words uncertain.
“You don’t want to?”
I raised one eyebrow, asking the question.
“No, it’s not that I don’t want to—”
Frustrated, I pushed myself up on my hands against his chest.
I ended up sitting somewhere around his lower abdomen, and Ed thrashed beneath me like a hooked fish.
Desperate to get up, I pressed his shoulders down instead, holding him in place.
Though with strength so slight he could have resisted, “pinned him down” would be generous—it was more accurate to say he simply surrendered and lay back.
“Then why?”
I leaned over him, tilting my head with affected innocence.
Ed couldn’t seem to find words; his face flushed crimson as his eyes squeezed shut, then opened again.
Long lashes—too long for a man—fluttered like butterfly wings.
His chest heaved beneath me.
Then a soft whimper escaped him, and he pleaded with me.
“Wouldn’t you come down?”
He clearly knew exactly what I was about to do, and seemed to anticipate it eagerly—while still asking me to stop.
“No.”
I refused flatly.
Honestly, I’d absorbed plenty of theory.
All I needed was the courage to put it into practice.
And over yesterday and today, I’d gathered something close to reckless courage, along with a surge of possessive desire.
‘If I’m going to claim him as mine, I need to leave my mark.’
I reached for the buttons of Ed’s shirt.
As I undid them one by one, starting from the collar he’d buttoned so carefully, I felt his abdominal muscles contract and tense.
His face was already flushed beyond what seemed possible, but now it had turned nearly the color of a tomato.
According to what I glimpsed between the parted collar, even the taut chest beneath was as red as his face.
“Lina, wait!”
Ed’s breathing came in ragged gasps like he’d just finished intense exercise, and he grabbed my forearm.
His lips seemed dry—I could see his tongue flicking out repeatedly to wet them.
His golden eyes had darkened, deep as rich honey.
‘You say “wait” while looking like that?’
Long past the point of caution, I couldn’t use my hands since he held my arms, so I let my eyes trace slowly down the length of his body instead.
The thin summer shirt clung to his muscles, outlining every contour.
It was the sort of sight that sparked the imagination.
Uncomfortable under my gaze, Ed writhed slightly.
The muscles shifted with an almost obscene elegance.
“I have something to say. Something important.”
After building this moment, it was unclear how I was supposed to respond to him suddenly turning serious.
“What is it?”
Still, for the sake of my shy lover, I suppressed the darker thoughts crowding my mind and asked.
“There’s still more you need to know about me.”
Ed spoke with evident tension.
The heat flooding my body began to cool.
Ed struggled to get the words out, his fists clenching and unclenching before he finally spoke.
“I haven’t told you who I really am yet—”
That was true.
So far, I only knew that he wasn’t Everett Rohas.
I’d been so relieved to learn he wasn’t the Crown Princess’s child’s father that I hadn’t really thought to wonder about his actual identity.
It felt like having a lover stolen from me and then reclaimed.
I’d become fixated on the thought of marking him as mine, ensuring I wouldn’t lose this newly discovered love again.
Today especially, his appearance seemed unusually radiant and beautiful, and I’d lost myself to it even more.
“I think I can guess what it is. You didn’t exactly go out of your way to hide it.”
I wanted to ease the burden on Ed, who’d gone pale with tension.
If a simple confession of the wrong name had been all it took, he wouldn’t have dragged this out so deliberately—there must be a real reason for the secrecy.
Ed and Kyle seemed to know each other.
At minimum, it meant he belonged to the Emperor’s side.
And quite a high rank at that, given how carefully Kyle treated him.
Beyond that, Ed became rather obsessed whenever anything involved the Emperor.
The Blue Hawk wasn’t made up solely of people like me—those who walked a double identity, stepping between light and shadow.
The Emperor had to shine purely.
But that brilliance required darkness.
Some of the most loyal within the Blue Hawk bore that darkness.
Such people existed as secrets themselves, their identities kept rigorously hidden.
Watching my understanding dawn on him, Ed’s color began to return.
He asked me like a frightened child.
“Would you be… all right with me, no matter what kind of person I am?”
If he belonged to the shadows of the Blue Hawk, he and I weren’t cut from the same cloth at all.
I was just the sort of timid, unambitious person I was.
I had no willingness to stake my life on loyalty to anyone.
What they did wasn’t purely noble or clean.
Yet despite all of that, the simple fact remained: I loved Ed. And that was my answer.
After consideration, I smiled and nodded.
“Yes, I’m fine with it. I love you.”
Ed lit up like he’d just received an unexpected gift.
Because he’d been tense just moments before, his smile still carried something pure and luminous, his pallor lingering slightly.
“Then I’ll give myself to you. I want to be completely yours.”
“Take it all. I want everything.”
It was a satisfying exchange.
I reached for the buttons of Ed’s shirt again.
As if to confirm his words were sincere, Ed laid his hand over mine and undid the buttons himself.
When I placed my palm against his abdomen, Ed flinched but didn’t pull away.
“Are my hands cold?”
Ed was warming faster than I was.
His heat burned brighter than mine, which hadn’t cooled at all.
Ed shook his head urgently, as if displeased at the thought of my hands leaving him.
“Can we kiss? Now?”
He asked like he was pleading.
“I didn’t ask permission before, did I?”
When I laughed softly, his lips found mine immediately.
The license I’d given for kissing without permission extended only to kissing itself.
I might have allowed things somewhat further, but not so far as “kissing intensely while being lifted toward the bed.”
‘But where exactly was the line?’
Yet Ed, who’d defended his chastity so insistently, was proving remarkably eager.
Even though this was a first for both of us, Ed seemed more skilled than I was.
Somewhere in the middle of our kiss, I realized I was lying on the bed.
As Ed settled fully onto the narrow mattress, the springs creaked beneath us.
“I love you. Love me while claiming me as yours. Then I’ll become completely and only your Ed.”
Ed whispered between endless kisses.
To me, my senses already drowning in possessive desire, his words were exactly as sweet as I needed them to be.
And so I claimed Ed entirely.
But I should have known that no transaction exists that favors only one side.
I should have learned that you never interrupt someone mid-sentence—you always listen to the end.

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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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