Chapter 21 (1/2)

While staring into the fire of the fireplace, Ernst rested his cheek upon the man’s warm chest. He had curled his hands around the man’s strong back, gripping his clothes. As a member of the militia, his clothes were made of thick, tough cotton.

Ernst looked up at the man intently. Thick eyebrows, reddish-brown eyes which reflected a strong light, a surprisingly fine-boned nose, and a large, serene mouth.

He stared, fixed upon this masculine man’s face. This man had done the same things as what was written in those books, hadn’t he. These thick arms which were now supporting Ernst’s back, did they make someone disheveled like in those books?

Seated atop the man’s solid thighs, Ernst gently moved his rear. He felt the man’s foot on his inner thigh.

The tips of his toes shivered with sparks.

“Lord Ernst?”

The man looked over to try and see what had happened.

“It’s nothing.”

Ernst answered bluntly while shaking his head, making those reddish-brown eyes look a bit wounded.

He hurriedly pushed his body closer. As if trying to say that nothing had really happened, he stroked his hand down that warm chest.

That warm chest was covered in hard muscle.

Ernst wanted to tear off its cloth and look at the man’s skin.

“Have you ever… taken a man as a partner?”

Ernst asked, murmuring each word haltingly. Although he’d only looked at the books briefly, all of them had been about the relations between men and women. Ernst didn’t have a hole like those women did.

This man had said that he loved Ernst. Supposedly, before, he would do those such things with anyone who agreed to do them with him.

Would he want to do those same things with Ernst, whom he said he loved?

“I have not.”

The man shook his head. Ernst felt a sharp prick of pain in his chest. Since this man had never had a male partner before, was it really certain that when he said he loved Ernst, he hadn’t mistaken something?