Chapter 133

Matthias leaned back and closed his eyes as soon as he finished. He remained unmoved even in the face of death at Leyla’s hands. 

She trailed the gun at him shakily still, swallowing down the bile at the thought of having to kill him. She’d never fired a gun before, despite the fact she’d watched countless huntings in Arvis. 

He always made killing look so elegant despite her knowing it was a brutal sport.

So really, he should have seen this coming.

Just a bullet. All she needed was to shoot him once, and she’d be free!

Leyla’s finger was now on the trigger. Her hand was shaking so much, but she needed to be firm with this! She was just standing still and aiming at the gun, but she was very out of breath, almost as if she had been running a very long distance. 

The tears just kept coming, and she didn’t know what for!

She didn’t know.

Her head was screaming at her to do it!

But her whole body refused to do so.

What was so wrong with what she was about to do anyway!? It’s what that scary, cruel, and friendly maniac wants too! He’s encouraging her to pull the trigger, too. Now if she were to do that, she didn’t know what would happen next to herself and her child. 

She’d forever be clueless on what to do or how to do anything! She couldn’t survive on her own!

She couldn’t do this on her own!

Leyla let out a loud cry of frustration, sobbing openly as she dropped to her knees.

Languidly, Matthias opened his eyes, landing on Leyla’s crumpled up and desperate form on the floor. 

She looked so adorable, all covered up in cake and cream, while her hands lay limp with the gun she had been threatening him with. 

So pitiful, so ferocious, and oh, so beautiful.

While Matthias looked at her quietly, Leyla’s sobbing grew even louder and more desperate. Her grip on the gun tightened up before she pointed it at him again.

A smile made its way to his lips with how stubborn she was being. He eventually moved to finally stand up, to which Leyla tried to do the same thing as well, but only lost balance and further stumbled back down on the floor.

Overpowering her always came so easy to him. From the start, her efforts had remained futile against him.

He was finally in front of her in a few short strides before yanking the gun out of her limp arms. She yelped and sobbed in protest, but he grabbed her by the arm, pulling her up to her feet to drag her.

Before she knew it, Leyla fell onto the bed. 

With the gun finally off her hands, Matthias hovered above her prone form on top of the bed. Leyla was still too preoccupied with heaving and sobbing as she lay down limply on the bed, feeling so hopeless about her life.

“I told you to kill me,” Matthias muttered calmly, before he flicked the safety of the gun off, just as he advised her to do before. He then looked down at her limp expression, the sobs still escaping from time to time. “If you can’t do it, I have to do it, Leyla.”

A clinking metallic sound penetrated echoed through the silent room, and Leyla’s sobs intensified, borderline hysterical now. She blinked back tears that kept blurring her line of sight, eventually managing to look up at him with tear-filled eyes. 

The gun was now trailed on her forehead instead.

“Do you want me to spare you?” Matthias crooned softly at her as she blinked back tears at him.

She stared at him with a dazed expression, his tone of voice soothing and merciful in her ears. She nodded at him.

Everything felt surreal to her, almost like she was in a dream. There was a fog in her brain, convincing herself none of this must be real. 

This was all just a nightmare that could be turned into a dream…

“Then you should be nice,” Matthias crooned at her, bending down to be closer to her.

He looked at her in such a caring way, she couldn’t help but be so receptive to him, nodding in agreement with his condition to her.

She couldn’t say no to him, not when he looked at her so tenderly…

So caringly…

She lost track of how long they stayed like that, but eventually, she heard him laugh. A couple of seconds later, there was a dull thump in the room as something fell to the floor. It wasn’t until she turned her head to see what made the noise, that she saw it was the gun that Matthias had been pointing at her head.

He’d spared her, and thrown the gun away. Its dull silver faintly reflected the bleeding red of the setting sun outside the window.

Tears fell from her eyes once more in streams, wetting the sheets of which she laid in, as the relief began to spread in her body, while the energy gradually drained from her. 

A sweet whisper from Matthias broke through the relief in her foggy mind.

“How unsavory it is.” He hummed, referring to the discarded gun, while simultaneously stroking her head lovingly with that sweet, velvety voice in her ears…

“It’s okay, Leyla.” he whispered to her, calloused hands slowly turning her to face him once again, “I’ll make sure to wipe anything dirty clean just for you.”

Her consciousness blanked out before Leyla could witness anything more from him. It was all she could remember once the world faded to black around her.

When she regained consciousness, Leyla found herself sitting in a bathtub filled with warm water. Groggily she looked around, before seeing Matthias’ face through the wispy steam. 

He looked as calm as she last saw him.

“Is it too hot?” He asked as soon as their eyes met. Leyla meekly shook her head in response to him. 

She remembered not fainting but couldn’t remember how she got here either. 

‘No.’ She immediately corrected herself. There was a faint memory in the back of her mind, but it didn’t seem like it had been real.

Standing up alone from the bed, Matthias went straight to the bathroom. As the sun continued to set outside, she remembered listening to the sounds of water flowing from the bath and the rhythmic thumps of his steps. 

Throughout that time, Leyla remained motionless and looked up at the ceiling instead, all fight lost within her, resigning unconsciously under Matthias’ control. 

And then he returned by her side.

He patted her head as if praising a good child, before expertly taking off her dirtied clothes at a sensual pace. He’d been in no hurry undressing her, his touch lingering more than he should have in certain places. It was a terrible feeling, but Leyla didn’t refute his touches, just letting them happen. 

At some point, the shame she felt eventually faded. Although she hated everything, she just wanted to give him everything he wanted from her so that he may leave her alone.

All those moments felt like a very distant world, a world she thought to be perfect it could only be impossible. But it had all been real. Sitting before the Duke, naked and bare in front of him, she couldn’t muster up a single emotion.

“Eyes,” Matthias whispered at her, and immediately she understood the meaning of the word after brief thought.

When she closed her eyes like a gentle child, Matthias’ hands caressed her face. For a man who would never have taken care of a dog in his life, she expected him to be clumsy, but he washed Leyla quite leisurely and efficiently.

Leyla stared ahead blankly, hunched minutely at his ministrations as his hands moved below her shoulders. Her two arms surrounding the knee were clenched tightly in one another, as the life and focus gradually returned to her eyes. The sound of pouring water stopped, and the two looked at each other quietly.

“Be nice, Leyla.” Matthias reminded her sharply before he gathered Leyla’s wet hair, which was covering her shoulders and chest and handed it over to her back. Leyla trembled quietly as she began to feel cold.

“You promised, didn’t you?” Mathias continued and kept drawing Leyla’s gaze back to him again and again.

He was addicted to any attention she would give him. He craved it desperately.

Leyla, who had been smacking her lips several times now, soon lowered her arms which had been covering her chest away from him. It was almost as if she was finally giving up control to him a second time that day. 

It was enticing.

There was no significant change in Matthias’ expression as his eyes continued to rake all over her bare form. His observant gaze was looking at the obvious changes on her body, specifically her skinny shoulders. 

A faint hint of embarrassment and satisfaction came to her mind, but eventually faded back into nothingness.

“I’ll buy you that cake again tomorrow.” He said as he drew Leyla’s wandering gaze back to him once more.

Leyla looked at him with a frown of confusion. 

The current situation she was in, and the promise to her were so strange and funny to her. All the same though, he seemed like a person who could do anything he wanted to do.

It was his only personality.

“I don’t need it,” Leyla murmured tiredly in response. All she could feel was a sickening sensation in her and pure exhaustion from everything that had happened by far from just this day alone.

It was almost like she was in the middle of another war. One that would only begin again with every new dawn that comes. like another war, would be repeated tomorrow.

“No.” Matthias refused, he was quite adamant in his refusal. It seemed like even her opinions mattered not to him either. “You like it.” He declared confidently and sternly. Leyla chuckled humorlessly.

“And what do I like and dislike?” She asked him rhetorically, “Do my preferences even mean anything to you?”

Leyla put her knees up again and wrapped her arms around them. She further hunched in on herself into the bathtub. That way, in the end, it would still feel like she was denying him something.

Matthias smiled languidly instead of answering her. 

Somehow it only served to unnerve her some more. Making her feel so stifled with how friendly his smile continued to appear. It was then that the wound on his arm across the bathtub caught her eye.

Leyla examined the wound, which appeared to be exposed under the sleeve of his rolled-up shirt with her squinted eyes. It was a scar, presumably made not too long ago. It suddenly sunk in her that this man was an officer in the army. One who was capable of taking over the city through a fierce front.

Realizing what Leyla was looking at, Matthias began to pull down his shirt sleeve with a softened smile, but Leyla stopped him by grabbing his arm tightly.

“It must have hurt a lot.” Leyla wondered softly, fingers softly caressing his scar like a doctor who was examining it carefully. 

It made Matthias laugh wonderfully at her softness.

“What an odd thing to worry about, when not even a moment ago you trailed a gun my way.” He pointed out in great amusement to her, making her snap her lips shut from her awe at hearing him laugh so purely with her.

“It didn’t hurt.” He relented not a moment too soon, and Leyla’s brows scrunched up, almost as though she was pouting at his words.

“Lie.” she protested weakly

“It’s the truth.”

Matthis soon removed Leyla’s grip on him and moved her hand back in the tub. As soon as their conversation stopped, the sound of pouring water filled the bathroom again as they settled into an agreed silence.

Leyla was looking down at the surface of the murky waters around her with red-rimmed eyes. She wished he would stop now, but Matthias washed Leyla as if he were a boy taking care of his precious toy. He had no qualms nor hesitation to touch her, even when his hands rubbed her swollen stomach. 

It was like he was unbothered by the existence of the child in her stomach. Like he didn’t care one bit about it.

Did he come to believe that the baby was another man’s child?

Leyla held her breath with anxiety. The thought troubled her greatly. She had no doubt even her baby was nervous, as it was currently not moving or giving her any fluttering sensations. 

Matthias continued to wipe and wash her body down with great ease. Even though he served her like a servant, she was under no illusion that he was still her master.

Befuddled, Leyla eventually closed her eyes, and she opted to just sit still and let his touch caress her body. 

Despite that, she could feel her breathing gradually turning ragged.

Matthias wiped Leyla’s cleanly washed body dry and proceeded to dress her. He then dried her wet hair before laying her on a new sheet of the bed.

Leyla mostly had a blank face as he did all this for her.

Sometimes she looked at him with a keen eye, but soon after, she dropped her gaze or turned her head away from him. Other than that, she looked calm as if she had become a doll with no string in sight.

Matthias, who proceeded to dim the light in the room, eventually found A tie, and he went to grab it, before going back to Leyla. 

She lay perfectly still and stared at him, blinking her eyes owlishly at him.

With a reassuring pat on the cheek, Matthias gently tied Leyla’s hands securely in a difficult knot, but not before wrapping her wrists around with a soft cloth. He didn’t want her to bruise if she struggled against her constraints.

“Sleep.” He commanded her, before bringing the other end of the rope to the bed’s pillar and began wounding it securely on the post. Matthias then came up beside her afterward, covering her body well with a warm blanket, tucking it snuggly around her.

He then left her alone.

Leyla found herself tossing and turning a few times before she soon calmed down again. She remained in the same position until he returned from the shower. Her eyes were drawn to him immediately, looking innocently clueless as if she didn’t know what was happening around her.

All bathed and dressed, Matthias released the knot on the post but did not release her, at least not fully. Instead, he tied a hard knot only on one of her wrists this time and tied his wrist at the other end of the rope. 

Leyla just watched and did not resist again this time, and she still looked exhausted. Considering what happened today, it was understandable.

Turning off the lights, Matthias lay beside her, their bound hands resting right next to each other.

“Don’t go.” Matthias’ whispered in the darkness, his fingers twitching to reach out to her. “Stay with me.”

His tone was so soft, and endearing, that it made her eyes sting at the sound of it. But she would not utter a single response. Matthias grasped her hand, his grip tightening up gradually to keep her further with him.

“Good night, Leyla.” He bid her, kissing her forehead. 

The act was too intimate, more than just friendly, and out of harmony with this battlefield between them.

Leyla found herself drifting to sleep as she rocked her gaze back and forth at her tied wrist and his serene face.

She found herself dreaming in a deep sleep. 

It was equally a nightmare as it was sad.