Juliette was silent as he carried her back to her bedroom, and Gaël could practically hear the wheels in his ward's mind turning as she tried working out the changes in their relationship.
When he settled her down on the edge of her bed and he crouched in front of her, Juliette's doe eyes were questioning as they met his gaze, and a crooked smile briefly touched his lips.
"You're wondering why I haven't taken you yet."
Juliette nodded.
"Do you remember the time you spent at the hospital three years ago, following the attack?" His ward nodded again, and he continued, "We took a sample of your blood that night, and when it became standard procedure for Caro households to test for blood compatibility, we had the blood of all our wards tested."
Her guardian paused, and Juliette knew him well enough to understand that he was waiting for her reaction. He wanted to know if she would condemn him and the others for testing their blood without their permission, and while she couldn't speak for the others—-
"I should've been dead if not for you," Juliette said softly. "I owe you my life, and since then, I know it's not much, but...I just wanted to repay you by being a dutiful ward. I have no objections that you had my blood tested."
Her guardian was quiet after she spoke, and Juliette started feeling nervous. Was this the part he would tell her that she was not a match? Or maybe it was something worse...like Gaël somehow figuring out that she had been in love with him for a very long time?
Gaël stared broodingly at Juliette. He could tell that she was growing anxious by the second, and he wondered if it was because she had somehow realized that his desire for her was inordinately...strong. Was Juliette worried he would now demand of her to do things that were beyond her duties as his ward? Did she think there was a chance he might not let her go even after she had given him her sangferia?
Emotions he couldn't make sense of churned inside of him, but Gaël forced himself to set all of them aside and focus on what was important.
"Your blood turned out to be a good match for mine. Not perfect, but good."
Juliette barely managed to keep her face expressionless. She knew he was only stating a quantifiable fact, but the words made her heart ache all the same. Chemical compounds had reduced her to being merely "good" even though she was in love with him while a werewolf princess he only occasionally worked with was his near-perfect match.
"However..."
Juliette looked up warily. There was more?
"Etienne's team has been conducting an experiment for a few months now. The sample size is inadequate - less than a dozen, if I'm not mistaken - and so they haven't released the results to the public. But if those results do turn out to be true, then there is a way for me to improve the compatibility percentage between your blood and mine."
"How?" Juliette didn't bother hiding her eagerness. "Whatever it is, I'm willing—-"
"To let me consume a specific amount of precoital cum prior to giving me your sangferia?"
Uh.
Okay.
What?
She looked at her guardian in confusion. She might not be that good at dirty talk, but wasn't he basically saying that he needed to make her come and eat her cum numerous times before they could have sex?
Pout.
It was a few minutes past five in the morning when Gaël silently slipped into Juliette's bedroom, and unlike the past few days, he did not find her still asleep and naked under the covers.
Instead, he heard his ward singing in the shower, and a smirk curved over his lips when a part of the song had her belting out of tune. His Juliette had many wonderful qualities, but a lovely singing voice she definitely did not possess.
Juliette opened her eyes as she reached the chorus, and her words turned into a shriek when she saw a bare-chested Gaël grinning at her.
"Wh-what—-"
But before she could get another word out, he already had her up against the glass wall, and his mouth swooping down to take her mouth in a long, drugging kiss.
Aaaaaaah.
With Gaël having introduced her to all sorts of things in the past few days, inhibition was already a thing of the past, and Juliette no longer hesitated to surrender herself to the passion that just kept burning hotter and hotter between them.
She kissed him back just as eagerly, since this time she had no fear of having her feelings exposed. Gaël told her that her responsiveness would only make her sangferia more potent, and so this was just her being "dutiful".
A whimper slipped past her lips when Gaël's hands started palming her breasts. And just like before, he was oh-so-good at tormenting her flesh, with the way he kneaded and fondled her swollen tits with infinite patience.