“Ah, seriously! Stop teasing me!” Vivian held her bursting heart tightly as her fists shook. She wanted to hit him. There were other things to joke about, and this was not one of them. She had imagined all sorts of thriller scenes inside of her.

Let’s consider the example of a person with all sorts of terrible rumors following after them acting nicely before confessing I’m actually the serial killer you expected. It was a very impish joke that could leave the person who listened with a heart attack.

“But it’s true that I instinctively hate it when others are poking through my space.” Be it physically or mentally, he added in his mind.

Vivian felt embarrassment and relief wash over her simultaneously. As expected, mansion basements filled with mountains of womens’ corpses were imaginations only existent in dark fairy tales, right? Everytime she tried to firmly believe that the Black Grand Duke was different from the rumors, the owner of the rumors kept causing her faith to falter, and she started to grow annoyed.

“That bastard of a Bluebeard!”

“In any case, you lack fear. Why did you follow me to my estate when you don’t know exactly what I might do to you?”

“What? What is the person who invited me to their estate saying right now?”

He roughly waved his hand. After the servants had withdrawn, he spoke to Vivian as though to scold her. “I’m telling you to be a little suspicious. I’m worried you’ll act the same way in front of others.”

“Haven’t you thought that the side following obediently might have personal reasons too?” She wasn’t a young child, but rather the erotica novelist, Perdie.

Since it had come to this point, Vivian started to ask questions explicitly. In the first place, the coyness of a lady that Vivian hadn’t even known she had, had been destroyed when she’d made a remark about how he could eat her in a different way.

“You’re not going to say that you didn’t have any such intentions after bringing me all the way here, right?”

“Vivian, it seems there’s been a misunderstanding…….”

He trailed off and set down his teacup with a very elegant gesture. (T/N: how uselessly elegant…)

“Haven’t I already fully explained the reason why I’ve invited Vivian to my estate?”

“Hm? Wasn’t that your Highness being coy? The kind of ‘I’ll only grab your hand and sleep’……..”

“…… Not at all.”

It seemed that it truly wasn’t the case. Vivian worked hard not to make a disappointed face and stuffed the last piece of cake into her mouth. Well, to be honest even it didn’t matter too much to her even if the act didn’t occur today. Her expectations had become inflated because she had been invited to his estate.

In the end, they were lovers by contract and that contract would continue until she wrote the perfect masterpiece. It was highly likely that she would experience it in some way or another while the contract was still active.

Then would we be able to slowly go through the stages of becoming lovers?

She tilted her head in question, but such a standard had long flown out the window the moment she had been invited to the estate.

In addition, Aidan seemed to dislike chaotic locations with lots of people, so it was next to impossible to go on a proper date. If the fact that Vivian was near nocturnal with her day and night flipped was included, then it was clear she wouldn’t be able to focus during the day when they were on their date.

Vivian’s dirty thoughts weren’t the sole reason for why the only act as lovers between them was seen as sex.

In her perspective, there were two answers to this situation. It was either ‘I’ll hold your hand as I sleep’ or ‘Bluebeard’. She didn’t want to think of the latter case, so she assumed that it was clearly the former. Vivian came to that conclusion and nodded her head.

“To be honest, I was planning on threatening Vivian into breaking the contract.”

“I would never!”

Vivian swallowed a sigh. It appeared that his actions of pushing her away at every chance was supposed to be a threat. Aidan’s intent appeared to be a provocation of the threatening kind — You’re not scared even if I do this? You’re still not afraid? — but unfortunately, it didn’t work on her.