Hearing his sweet voice so close sent a shiver down her spine.
It was because he was working for a god. The fact that her face was burning and her heart was pounding was all because of the god, for sure.
“O-Okay, just let me down now,” she pleaded, squirming and flailing her arms.
He put her down, but then immediately grabbed her wrist. “What’s this?” he noticed, looking at several tiny scratches leaving little lines of blood streaking down her arm.
She didn’t remember getting scratched like that, but it looked like a scrape from when she was moving the crates.
Edmund pulled out a handkerchief and wrapped it around her arm. She stood still, watching in surprise at how well the son of a duke could care for wounds, but then quickly stopped his hand. “It’s nothing but a scrape. It barely even hurts. You don’t have to make such a big deal out of it,” she protested.
“I asked if you were injured, didn’t I?”
“Well, yeah, but I didn’t even notice this. It doesn’t even count as an injury.”
“Are you saying it doesn’t matter because you didn’t notice?” He looked blatantly upset when Nina nodded, but then sighed and smiled for some reason. “I see. Well, I suppose we’ll have to be extra careful since I can’t see your pain.”
“Huh? What do you— Ack!” Before she could ask him what he meant, he’d swept her into his arms.
“I can’t transport using divine powers if it’s not for the contract, so I’ll have to send you by carriage. And I’ll carry you that far,” he explained.
“Why?! I can walk! And we’re going to leave the window and door broken like that?! I can walk!”
She tried to get down, but his arms showed no signs of loosening despite his slim build. With no other options, she went to work peeling his fingers open one by one, but he simply put one back down when she started on the next one, getting her nowhere.
“Why are you— Oh! This is the heroine buff, isn’t it?!” she demanded. That mysterious power that turned everyone into perverts could explain Edmund’s strange behavior.
“I’m a contractee,” he rebuffed. “You confirmed with Dino that it does not affect other promisees.”
“Okay, so you’re protecting your precious heroine actor?”
“There may be some of that, but I wouldn’t have to carry you if I was simply protecting you.”
“If you don’t have to do it, put me down!” Everything he was doing, saying, and being was plain crazy right now.
“I might not have to, but I do want to,” he insisted.
“What…?” What the heck did he mean by that, not needing to hold her but wanting to? Overtaken by confusion and still in his arms. “Advantages to carrying me… Preventing my escape? Leaving only one set of footprints?”
Edmund burst into laughter like he couldn’t hold it in. “What are you on about? I’m not trying to commit the perfect crime. There’s a much simpler explanation.”
“Simpler… You walk faster than me?” To be honest, she was pretty sure she walked faster than he would when he was carrying a person, but he seemed to think she was injured, so maybe he was considering that.
“No. I simply want to be close to you. I can look into your face from up close when I’m holding you like this,” he replied, looking into her eyes, his face still close to hers. One gold eye that seemed to hold the shining sun, one blue as clear as the sky on a cloudless day, the silvery hair that framed skin so smooth the world’s women would cry with jealousy, and features so perfect there couldn’t possibly be any more beautiful.
The light of the moon caught on his softly swaying hair, and Nina’s heart leaped in her chest.
“Nope! Can’t do it! Don’t look at me!” she proclaimed. She squirmed to push Edmund’s face away because she couldn’t bear how embarrassed she felt, but she worried she’d push his neck in some odd direction if she kept at it.
With no other option, she decided all she could do was look away herself, but his chuckle in her ear made her heart pound. “I want to see cat Ed…” she muttered.
“Please bear with me as I am, for now. Until now…I’ve been the one enduring it.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
She didn’t understand what he meant, but it was dangerous to look at him or talk more. He said he’d put her in a carriage; she just had to hold out until then.
But Nina was far too naïve. She had no way of knowing that the far more difficult battle awaited her in the carriage, where he sat beside her, looking at her, leaving her with even fewer routes of escape than when he held her.