Chapter 142: The Interruption
One more breath and they would shatter.
Lorraine gasped suddenly, as if surfacing from deep water. The haze of desire clouding her eyes thinned, burned away by a thought she had pushed aside too long. Clarity struck sharp and cold.
"Do you think the Dowager is behind the emperor asking you to lead the investigation?" she asked, voice low but steady.
Leroy stilled, blinking at her. They were practically tangled in each other, breaths mingling, her hand still lingering against his skin. And yet, this was what his clever little wife chose to ask?
"She let me know it was her," he said finally. His tone was firm. He hadn’t taken it as an accident.
Lorraine’s lips parted. "The Dowager knows, doesn’t she? She knows I’m the Divina."
The certainty struck her like lightning. At once, scattered fragments aligned. The Dowager’s idle visits, her seemingly trivial questions, her gentle but deliberate prodding... What Lorraine had dismissed as passing curiosity now gleamed like snares, carefully laid in her path. She thought she had evaded them. Perhaps she hadn’t.
She prided herself on weaving illusions, on pulling wool over the sharpest eyes. But there were minds more dangerous than hers. And the Dowager, she was certain, was one of them.
"If she knows..." Lorraine’s voice dropped, almost to a whisper. "Then she’ll come to me again. Either to bargain. Or to threaten."
That would be her proof. If Hadrian truly possessed something damning against the Dowager, she would move to protect herself. The only question was: what weapon would she choose?
Leroy gave a quiet laugh, startling her. Of course, she would have reached the same conclusion he had toyed with after Hadrian’s reaction. He had hoped to distract her, to let her rest before the storm he suspected was coming. But his wife always reached too quickly, too sharply.
He pressed a kiss to her forehead, lingering, protective. "She will seek you. And she will threaten you with my life."
Because for anyone who knew her secrets, her weakness was no mystery. It was him.
But that didn’t trouble him. Because the truth was the same in reverse.
They might be each other’s weakness. But together, they were unbreakable.
"I’ll go with you," he murmured. He didn’t know how she would manage it, but the thought of letting her face it alone was unthinkable. He wanted to stand beside her, to watch her weave her venom and brilliance, and to be the one who caught her when it frayed her. "You took in that other prince, so you must take me in as well."
Lorraine studied him, searching his face. There it was: not anger, but a flicker of bitterness, of jealousy, hidden beneath his calm. And even so, he had not demanded she cast Damian aside. He only asked to remain at her side.
How could a man be this perfect?
Her lips curved into a wordless smile. She lifted the cloth again, offering it to him as a signal, a surrender, a promise.
She would give him whatever he wanted.
And when at last Leroy took the cloth, it was not to wipe. He twisted her wrist with it still between their hands, pulling her flush against him. The damp linen slipped uselessly into the water as he caged her with his body, his breath hot against her ear.
"You think you can distract me with politics," he murmured, voice low and edged. "You almost had me fooled."
Her lips parted, a protest half-formed, but the words never came, because his mouth claimed hers before she could speak, fierce and unrelenting. It wasn’t gentle. It was everything that had burned unsaid between them, breaking free at last.
The kiss stole her breath, tangled her thoughts, drowned even the fear of the Dowager’s schemes. His hand anchored at her nape, the other gripping her waist as if daring her to vanish. And Lorraine, for all her clarity a heartbeat ago, melted into him as though she had been waiting for this ruin all along.
When he finally tore away, his forehead pressed to hers, both of them unsteady, his voice was a vow.
"Let them all try. Remember, Lorraine, I’ll be with you. We’ll be stronger together," he said. He knew he had to voice his thoughts out, since his wife did not understand his actions alone.
He held her cheeks and kissed her forehead. She held his arm, tightly. "I’ll depend on you then."
He got the cloth, lifted her arm with a reverence at odds with the hunger in his gaze, and began to draw the damp fabric slowly along her skin. Down her shoulder, across the curve of her collarbone, then lower, each pass of the cloth followed by his thumb sweeping the droplets away, as though to erase the line between cleansing and claiming.
The torchlight flickered against their joined shadows on the wall, each motion deliberate, the silence between them charged enough to snap.
He scrubbed slowly, but it was no cleansing. It was claim. Every stroke lingered too long, each glide of fabric making her skin prickle in awareness.
The water rippled around them as he leaned closer, not enough to touch beyond the cloth, but close enough that her breath caught. His gaze dipped over her form with a soldier’s discipline and a man’s hunger, lingering on every curve, every line she allowed him to see.
The bath filled with silence, broken only by water lapping against stone and the faint sound of cloth sliding over skin. Their looks spoke more than any words could—an unspoken admission, a surrender dressed in restraint.
By the time he pressed the rag to her wrist, echoing her earlier gesture, it no longer felt like washing. It felt like possession—mutual, wordless, and binding.
And then his gaze drifted lower, to the delicate line of her throat... and beneath it. Her lips curved, both shy and daring, the blush on her cheeks only heightening the provocation. Leroy’s smirk darkened, deepened.
The spell broke at the sudden rap of knuckles against the door. His reaction was instinctive—he pulled her flush against him, shielding her within the breadth of his body.
"Enter," he commanded, his voice rougher than intended.
The man in black stepped inside, carrying a stack of garments and fresh towels. Leroy’s eyes narrowed, tracing the practiced ease with which he set them down. Too familiar, as if he’d done this before. As if he knew exactly what was needed here.
Leroy’s attention lingered too long on those towels before dropping to the wife he guarded close against his chest.
Her hand shifted then, sliding down the ridges of his abdomen, tracing the hard lines until it found the sharp descent of his hipbone, the provocative ’V’... and further still.
His breath caught.
He bent, pressing his lips to her damp hair as her fingers closed around him beneath the water’s veil. His spine tightened, every muscle taut. Across the room, the servant lingered at a careful distance—far enough to appear discreet, yet near enough to see.
The thought that the man might be watching only made Leroy’s throat rumble with a low, restrained grunt.