Arc 1, New Moon

Chapter 21

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?

Ernst tightly gripped the man’s clothes and breathed in the man’s scent. He wasn’t able to sleep well anymore without this man’s scent.

He had looked for books about relations between men. Though that man had said that he truly felt that way for Ernst, Ernst felt that it wasn’t good if he himself didn’t know how things were done.

He had grabbed book after book. Each time, Ernst’s hopes had been beaten down.

All of them were about intercourse between man and woman. All of the men inside these books looked at women, thought about women, and grew erect for them. After they met, they exchanged a conversation that lasted for a single page, and then they were doing it. It was as that man had said.

Was that what it looked like normally, Ernst wondered. In that case, it might be that even if the man said he loved Ernst, the man’s own body might not believe him.

Ernst had impatiently recalled this when he hurried down the hall. Below, the militia had been training. That man had also been there. A manly body with rippling muscles. His masculine facial features sometimes took on an earnest look.

Ernst’s heart pounded with a thump.

In front of the fireplace, Ernst clung to the man’s neck. More than usual, a nice scent drifted from the nape of the man’s neck.

“You have a nice scent. Are all of the Dunbertians like this?”

It was the same scent as young grass in spring.

“Do you think so? I have been told that to other races, we smelled like beasts…”

The man laughed from deep in his throat. Because of how intimate their bodies were, the low sound reverberated through Ernst, making his fingertips tremble.

“In my opinion, Lord Ernst’s scent is more pleasant.”

Ernst instantly raised his head to look up at him. Perched upon the man’s thighs, Ernst found that his eyes reached around the man’s chin.

“It’s a fresh, fruit-like scent.”

The man brought the tip of his nose to the back of Ernst’s neck. His breath was ticklish, and Ernst laughed.

“…If I might be permitted to comment, I believe our bodily fluids might be highly compatible.”

Once he said this, his hot tongue slowly traced the line of Ernst’s clavicle.