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LOS 48
He asked. Giles wanted confirmation of what I had just said. Yes... it felt awkward, like a garment that didn't fit, and strange, as if those words should never have crossed my lips, but I clearly told him that I loved him.
Come to think of it, this was a first for me.
The experience of telling someone directly that I loved them.
I had never even told Johann Meier that I loved him. In truth, he had never even been an object of love.
“I didn't know I would come to love you, either.”
Those words were sincere. Inside the narrow car, we were pressed very close together. He inhaled the breath I exhaled. I, too, could feel his respiration. There was no more room to retreat, and Giles knew that fact as well.
He leaned in to kiss me. It was a very cautious and slow movement. He was prepared to pull back immediately if I showed even the slightest sign of reluctance. It was because he was afraid. He was anxious that he might be getting ahead of himself before I had fully given him my heart.
Just like that day at the Salzburg estate, when we shared our first kiss while the balance of our relationship was severely skewed.
Giles had made a mistake once before. But now was not then. I no longer had any reason to fear him. Moreover, it was because I trusted Giles.
To confess the truth, I do not know much about the emotion called love. I had never learned about that feeling—the one that makes the heart and mind fertile and fattens the soul until it is full—nor had I ever truly felt such an emotion.
That was why I couldn't even be certain if the feeling I had for Giles was indeed love. At the very least, he had kissed me... and I did not want to reject him. If so, is this what love is?
I did not want Giles to hesitate. I did not want him to be afraid, unsure if his actions were moving in the right direction. So, I held Giles with both hands and responded, however clumsily.
Neither of us spoke. There was no room for something like language to intervene. Soon, kissing alone was not enough for us. We needed something more.
Our breathing grew ragged, and heat rose in our bodies. To fill the slowly blooming ecstasy, we explored and indulged in each other's bodies with hurried touches.
After focusing on the act for a long while, Giles pulled his lips away at some point and looked at me. His face was flushed. His black eyes were focused on nothing but me. Everything else around us had long since devolved into a meaningless background.
“Anna.”
He called my name. It was a deep, masculine voice, distinctly different from usual. The voice, which seemed to crave me while simultaneously pleading, acted as another stimulus.
I could realize it instinctively. Giles was asking for my intent. He was seeking permission to explore deeper into me.
He seemed to have already reached his limit. I should have been afraid, but I wasn't at all. Rather, I felt a sense of satisfaction knowing that he was desperately longing for my permission.
“...Not here.”
Giles understood what those words meant. We stepped out of the car, held hands, and climbed the stairs of the apartment complex. Our steps were quite hurried. In an instant, I stood before the main gate leading to the house where I stayed.
I took out the key and unlocked the door. Then, I invited him into the space permitted only to me.
The moment the door closed, he embraced me and buried his lips in my neck. A gasp escaped my lips at the unfamiliar sensation.
He held my body with one arm and wrapped my leg around his thigh with the other hand. I could feel his firm body pressing against me between my legs. Feeling me tremble, he looked at me.
As if to reassure him, I pressed my lips against his first. In truth, it was a useless worry. He must know what it meant for me to let him step foot in this house.
Giles lifted me while holding me.
We already knew where he was heading.
Even the time spent undressing was a waste at this moment. After laying me on the bed, Giles stripped off his uniform first. The stiff, disciplined uniform fell haphazardly to the floor, and as the shirt soon covered it, I saw his upper body revealed for the first time.
The form of a solid man filled my vision. I don't know about other women, but this was the first time in my life I had seen such a thing.
He was lean and toned. The sight unfolding beneath his broad pectorals was reminiscent of a sculpture. Unconsciously, my toes curled and the space between my legs tightened. I was embarrassed... but I had no room to think about such things now.
He approached me. He trapped me beneath his body, half-prone, and gazed into my eyes. Finally, reading the look of permission, he pulled me into his arms and sucked on my lips.
Being held while he was clothed was entirely different from being held while feeling the bare skin directly.
I carefully caressed his forearm. I traced his veins with my fingertips. I could feel Giles's breathing grow rough. His presence pressed bluntly against me between my legs.
It was something I would normally never even think about, but I was already out of my mind as well. The piece of fabric wrapping my body felt so bothersome it was driving me crazy. I wanted to get rid of it quickly. I hurriedly stripped off my blouse and bottoms, but this time, the underwear was the problem.
Shh, he whispered in my ear as if soothing me. While holding me, Giles reached for the clasp of my bra. Click, click. The hooks holding it in place gave way effortlessly, and the lingerie fell away from my body.
Now, I was skin-to-skin with him. Giles caressed one nipple with one hand while kissing the other. The sensation of his lips touching the sensitively swollen peak was so novel that I unconsciously tensed my body.
“Anna. Relax.”
He spoke, looking up at me from below.
“I taught you how before.”
Of course, I remembered. He had caressed my abdomen on the train. Remembering the sensation of those thick-jointed fingers carefully pressing down on my soft skin, I let out a sharp breath.
“Good girl.”
Back then, and even in that moment, he praised me. But the voice of Giles reaching my ears now was absolutely not the same as before. I felt that he was exercising all his strength to maintain restraint. Giles seemed to have already reached his limit. And I was the same.
I was no fool. I simply lacked experience, but I knew well enough what happened when a man and woman shared a bed. He was being too considerate of me. He was clearly mistaken about something.
“Giles.”
He looked at me. Perhaps he thought I was about to tell him to stop. But I had no intention of doing so. I wanted him as much as he wanted me.
I had the right to possess him. No, I wanted to possess him. I wanted to carve his traces into my body to make it clear what kind of relationship we had become.
I pulled him close and gazed quietly into his pitch-black eyes. Anxiety resided at the edges of his gaze. Poor thing, he still wasn't completely certain.
I whispered something into his ear.
Then, I met his eyes again.
But before he could even fully process the change, he pushed me down onto the bed. My breasts were crushed within his grip as he buried his lips in the nape of my neck. It felt as if sparks were flying before my eyes.
Every time he scraped upward from the bottom of my nipples with the tips of his nails, the lower part of my body, drenched to an uncomfortable degree, throbbed.
His body opened my legs and pressed in. Beneath the thick fabric, something hot and hard slowly rubbed against my cleft. The moment Giles gripped my breast, I wrapped my legs tightly around his lower body.
A metallic sound tickled my ears, and soon he threw off his belt. I'm not sure if he took off his pants as well. I only know that he gripped my pelvis and positioned himself between them.
“Relax.”
Giles commanded in a voice laced with a metallic rasp. Following his words, I let out my breath. He invaded through the slight gap of my parted lips. I knew. This would not be the end. Absolutely not.
Nor would it end quickly.
-
As usual, I am sitting before the piano today. However, this time it is not at the radio station. The concert for which Morgan Sage officially invited me is not far off.
Before coordinating with the orchestra, I was polishing the piano concerto I would perform at a practice room located downtown.
Though it is a sequence of notes contained in the same score, to me, these were not simple notes. This was the work of a poet seeking interpretation, a feast of words not yet born into the world. Depending on how the performer interprets the piece, the same score can become a completely different work.
I sat alone at the piano, closed my eyes, and played the concerto. And I fully felt the tone of the keys singing through my fingers.
Sorrowful and lonely, yet desperate like a flame that had not yet gone out... the thoughts filling my head eventually drifted toward one man's name. Giles Hessen. I thought of his voice, the touch I felt with my fingertips, and my kisses with him.
I let out a long breath and slowly opened my eyes. The piano was still singing beside me. I should have been focusing on the music, but I kept thinking of him. It was useless even if I tried not to. This piece resembled Giles far too much.
It was then. I heard footsteps drawing closer. The sound of dress shoes? No, these were the footsteps of someone wearing combat boots. It was clear that today was a day where focusing on practice was out of the question.
Thinking this, I turned my head and prepared to greet Giles. But the person standing before me was not Giles. Nor was it a soldier I didn't know. It wasn't Giles, but another soldier I could not forget even if I tried was looking at me.
A man with ash-blonde hair.
It was Vincent Monagan.
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