The Villain's End Is Pregnancy - c59
“Hey! Hey you!”
Thwack. Thud.
Ryan relentlessly punched Hendrick’s shoulders and back with his fists. However, the hot mucous membrane covering his mouth showed no signs of coming off.
It was hard to come to his senses with the tongue swirling inside his mouth at will and the deep contact that seemed to take his breath away.
‘I can’t breathe!’
‘It’s hard!’
But the problem was that Hendrick didn’t give him a moment to rest. Even Ryan’s desperate cries were all swallowed up by him, so they couldn’t even come out properly.
Instead, his ears kept hearing lewd gulps, wet friction sounds, and his own groaning noises.
‘Aaaah!’
Yet, as the heat kept surging up inside his body like sparks, he felt like he was going crazy. This was partly due to the excitement brought on by the kiss, but the real issue was his own pheromones reacting positively to the temptation the alpha was deliberately emitting.
‘Why on earth!’
Why is my body responding to Hendrick without a clue!
With a sense of crisis that things might really go all the way at this rate, Ryan mustered all his strength.
“Haaah… hah! Haah! Huk.”
As soon as his lips were finally freed, rough breaths poured out immediately. His chest ached as if he had spotted Hendrick far away and ran to him at full speed. His mouth felt scalding hot as if burned by fire, and his tongue was sore and completely wet with saliva.
“Haah, huk.”
He wanted to argue, but he had to catch his breath heavily for a while without the mind to do so. Even during that time, Hendrick’s gaze never left his small, panting lips. No, it seemed to grow more persistent and increase in temperature.
“You, huk, what the… huff, are you…”
He thought he was a bit better now, but it was still hard to speak when he tried to argue. Ryan’s eyes were tightly creased with a feeling of injustice and irritation.
The unspoken resentment filled those eyes.
Asking why he was doing this. What the hell was he doing to someone who was sleeping.
“Sorry. I was just looking at your sleeping face and you were so adorable that I unconsciously…”
“Huk!”
What kind of nonsense is that.
‘This guy has no shame!!’
Ryan’s eyes opened wide. His enlarged pupils shook wildly. His mouth hung open, and at the same time, his ears and cheeks turned red.
“You, you, wha… what, th-that kind of…”
He was so flustered that, in a different sense than before, Ryan couldn’t speak properly. Of course. For Hendrick to say that about him.
‘A-a-a-a-adorable… aaaah!’
It felt like being tickled all over by a puppy. Otherwise, there’s no way every part of him could feel so tingly like this.
His lips, tongue, palate, nose, eyes, palms, and even the soles of his feet – he really wanted to scratch them all.
“Are you crazy? What’s with you? Or did you eat something wrong?”
Ryan’s suspicious gaze immediately turned to the table. There lay the leftover snacks he had been eating until just now.
‘Something was a bit strange. I suddenly felt sleepy!’
Even though he knew very well it wasn’t because of that, Ryan tried to divert Hendrick’s behavior elsewhere.
“Right. I don’t understand myself these days either.”
“Yeah, I think there’s something wrong with you. Ah! Could it be…”
Seeing Hendrick nod his head without denial, agreeing with him, another possible reason for his behavior came to Ryan’s mind.
‘Could the effects of the Hidrian extract still be lingering?’
No matter how potent, could that really be the case? But Ryan kept trying to interpret Hendrick’s behavior differently.
“But if you think about it, it’s only natural.”
“Natural?”
“What alpha wouldn’t be shaken in front of the person they love.”
Is there something wrong with his heart? Every time Hendrick speaks or expresses himself so bluntly like that, it pounds against his will.
Ryan showed a habit that had almost become routine these days. He placed his palm on his chest. Then he could feel the pulsation more clearly.
He knew this would happen. From the moment Hendrick started saying embarrassing things. Because he could guess what he was going to say. He kept trying to make excuses with other things, but.
“Ryan.”
As if telling him not to divert his attention elsewhere, Hendrick’s call caught his consciousness. The gaze he met was serious and held a fiercer heat than ever.
“Can I kiss you again?”
It was clearly a request for permission.
‘It’s a notice. A notice.’
Ryan grumbled inwardly. But for some reason, his head nodded against his will. It was slowly moving up and down.
Seeing the brightly lit face and the beautifully curving lips, his heart pounded.
At the same time, their lips interlocked once more.
* * *
Throughout the meal, the atmosphere was cheerful yet ambiguous. The conversation was clearly continuing, but there was a strange feeling of it being superficial.
‘Is it just me?’
Really? Eyes full of doubt turned forward.
“So, the experiments you’re doing now were to make it easier to access that maritime southern country series you were reading… What’s wrong, Ryan?”
Hendrick immediately met his gaze and asked.
“Oh, no. It’s just a bit unexpected for you to show interest in this kind of thing.”
This was also true. Fortunately, Hendrick didn’t seem to notice that he was actually more interested in something else.
“A technology that can print in large quantities. If it’s commercialized, it will be a huge innovation for the publishing industry that currently relies only on hand-copying. More people will be able to access books and printed materials more easily.”
“Well…”
Calling it an innovation felt a bit embarrassing, so Ryan averted his eyes, pretending to eat.
“Honestly, I was surprised. That you were thinking about this. And I’m grateful too.”
“What. Did you think I was just playing around all the time?”
“Of course not. I’m just saying it’s amazing. You didn’t just enjoy it for yourself, but tried to find a way to contribute to society.”
“Well, I never had such grand ideas, you know.”
Ryan didn’t understand why Hendrick kept saying those things. First, he made embarrassing remarks about him being adorable, making him flustered.
Now, he was attributing such a great reason to the movable type printing that Ryan had come up with just to more conveniently access the books he wanted to read quickly.
At this rate, Ryan would be thankful if Hendrick didn’t go around introducing him to people as if he were some kind of capable inventor.
“Why not? You’re trying to create something no one has thought of before. It will not only help publishing, but also be necessary for education.”
Perhaps that breadth of thinking was something Hendrick could have because he was a prince. Ryan found himself unconsciously looking at him with sparkling eyes out of admiration.
‘If the baby inherited his brain structure, it would be quite smart.’
He also didn’t realize that he was naturally having such imaginations again.
“But even if you develop this, I don’t think it’ll be easy to start printing right away.”
“Why?”
“First, you’d have to get permission from the author, wouldn’t you?”
Ryan wasn’t sure if there were copyright laws in this world, but authors were quite active in expressing their opinions about the distribution of their works to the point of having separate copyists.
“When the first series came out, there was quite a stir in the country as they tracked down and brought to court someone who illegally copied it.”
Of course, the author didn’t directly reveal themselves. It was something done through a lawyer as a proxy, and there were various rumors about the author’s identity.
A wealthy merchant, a nobleman with a large territory, speculation that it might be foreign royalty, and so on.
“Leave that to me.”
“To you?”
“Yeah. You saw it before, right? The one that was presented to the palace. If we ask the proxy, they’ll gladly tell us. That’s why they brought it in the first place.”
Indeed, no matter how veiled the author was, would they refuse a meeting requested by the prince? Besides, the very fact that they had presented it in the first place meant they couldn’t say they didn’t have such intentions.
Ryan was amazed at how the things he had planned but remained vague were gradually becoming concrete through Hendrick.
Thanks to that, the earlier awkwardness was forgotten.
“Then, while we’re at it, we could also get exclusive rights to the sequel from the author…”
Hendrick’s gaze on Ryan as he chattered away became even gentler.
Even after finishing their meal, they naturally had tea and continued to converse about this and that until late at night when they stood in front of their respective room doors.
“Good night, Ryan.”
“Oh, you too.”
“Sweet dreams.”
“Yeah, sure.”
What is this tingling feeling on the tip of his tongue again? Maybe it’s because he had never exchanged such greetings with Hendrick since knowing him.
Ryan wiggled his toes hidden under his slippers for no reason. Even as he answered steadily, he couldn’t turn around because he felt a strange sense of reluctance.
The thought of parting just by turning around in front of the doors felt that way.
“If you can’t fall asleep…”
As if he knew that feeling, Hendrick’s voice was heard again, even though Ryan thought he was done talking.
“Knock anytime. I’ll be waiting.”