Everlastingly Loving You - Chapter 152

The first thing Sophia had done once she woke up didn’t have anything to do with her boyfriend.

Instead, she called her best friend up, while Nicholas was still asleep and she was still completely undressed – and fortunately covered by a comforter.

Once Clarisse answered her call, she heard Sophia whisper, “Help.”

Clarisse was taken aback.

“What?”

“Help?” She furrowed her brows.

Sophia wasn’t calling her to reprimand her?

“So this isn’t about the food fight?” Clarisse mumbled a bit too loudly.

Sophia asked, “What food fight?”

Clarisse’s eyes widened. She scrambled to do damage control.

“Nothing, just some palace gossip.”

“Ah,” Sophia mumbled, uninterested in whatever was happening in the palace. These sorts of things happened all the time in the Beldovian Palace. They were patched up quickly and were forgotten as time passed but Sophia hadn’t realized who was involved this time.

“So what is this about?” Clarisse asked.

As her answer, Clarisse got dead silence.

Sophia had called her – but she hadn’t gotten to the part of how she’d break the news.

Nearly three decades she was a virgin. An unblossomed flower.

Last night, she’d blossomed.

Like a flower that had lost some of its petal.

She wondered how she’d describe it to Clarisse, unaware Clarisse had no intention of hearing how she had lost her virginity that night to her boyfriend.

“Nicholas… and I…”

Clarisse automatically filled in the blanks.

‘Engaged?’ She thought at first.

‘Broke up?’ Another part of her thought.

“It’s not awful news,” Sophia assured, still tight-lipped regarding what’d happened.

“Last night… we…”

Realization dawned on the Samarisian countess.

It was an event from last night that regarded both Sophia and Nicholas.

So that was why she was too shy to say anything. She didn’t know how.

A smirk made its way on Clarisse’s face.

‘Consider me shocked,’ she uttered under her breath in astonishment.

“And you called me to tell me that you and Nicholas did the deed so early in the morning, why?” Clarisse asked, pushing away her plate. She’d lost her apetite for now.

God forbid she thought of eating while calling with Sophia.

For a second there, Clarisse was terrified Sophia would start describing everything vividly. She’d done enough to her apetite for one day.

She heard Sophia breathe raggedly.

“So how was it? Can you walk?” Clarisse asked suddenly.

“I can,” she heard Sophia answer.

Clarisse spat, “Then you didn’t enjoy it enough.”

Sophia’s eyes widened.

“Clarisse!” She whisper-yelled – Sophia hadn’t even disclosed what she thought of it.

Actually, things were better of that way – everyone agreed.

“What?” Clarisse asked from the other side of the call.

“We’re both adults that are of age, we don’t need to act like they are small kids listening into our conversation,” she said matter-of-factly.

“I called the wrong person.”

Clarisse shrugged, “It was either me or Louis, pick and choose.”

“Never mind, they’re both the wrong options.”

Clarisse laughed softly – by the soft snoring she could tell Nicholas was asleep and Sophia was trying to call her discreetly – without Nicholas noticing at least.

“Who else did you have to confide in, Oliver?” Clarisse slapped her thigh from the mere thought of it.

Sophia confiding in Oliver. When pigs fly.

“Goodness no,” Sophia muttered, staring at her phone lock screen – an adorable picture of her and her boyfriend cuddling.

It had come so unexpectedly. The urge to…

No idea what had come over her that night, Sophia wondered if she’d been holding back. And if it’d all been releaesed last night.

Then she decided she’d stop overthinking things and wait for Nicholas to awaken – whilst calling Clarisse so she had someone to talk to and confide in.

Sophia hadn’t a mother to discuss these things.

Her father was no good when it came to this. Besides, Sophia knew he wouldn’t give a damn what she did. So long as he got his throne back, whatever everyone else did was insignificant to him.

Or was it now?

__

Who would’ve thought things would’ve turned cold between husband and wife, years ago they were the perfect couple. And now, they were eating across each other, at two sides of the table, meters apart.

The tension was high.

Emilia had refused to attend breakfast with her husband.

A year ago or so, she’d been a widow.

Now her husband had come back to life – or so she liked to assume. It was better than him being somewhere out there all this time. Just desperately needing a break.

Emilia had thought this through; how things could’ve been solved without Raymond fleeing his own kingdom and leaving everything up to her.

They could’ve worked things out like they always did in the past.

They could’ve fallen in bed and fall in love with each other all over again.

But here she was.

She played with her breakfast. Of all the fake scenarios she’d come up with, who would’ve thought it was the one that was most impossible that actually became a reality.

“So, how are you doing these days?” She heard Raymond ask.

She gritted her teeth and clenched her fork.

Luckily for Raymond, he sat at the other head of the table, meaning he was too far a distance for her to throw something at him or anything else she could find near her.

Raymond studied Emilia.

“I see you haven’t grown out of giving people you’re mad at the cold treatment, wife.”

Emilia snapped, “I’m not your wife.”

Raymond corrected, “Legally, you are.”

“And to everyone else, you are.”

Emilia glared at him, “You think just because you’ve returned and been here for a year that people are just going to hand you back what you left behind? Me included?”

Raymond remained quiet, he didn’t deny nor confirm things. He simply sat there, looking smug, as though he knew something Emilia didn’t.

“You may be my husband on paper but as I’ve said many times, you’re nothing but a corpse to me.”

“Done with your speech?” Raymond inquired.

Emilia stared at him incredulously. His audacity.

She wanted to smack him right then and there without any regrets.

At this point, she would rather have Sophia rule over Beldovia than him. Sophia didn’t leave when things got tough – of course, she was over at Sanguis visiting her boyfriend while she was at court with her father, but that was a different case. She didn’t leave everything she knew behind for a break. If so, that’d be extremely out of character for her.

Sure, she was horrible with Sophia, and she knew she deserved most of the things Sophia had done to her – including all the violence her stepdaughter had used, that was to be made clear.

But what she respected most when it came to Sophia was how she was usually level-headed when it came to everything but her family and personal matters.

She could put things aside and be impartial. A key trait for any ruler.

Speaking of Sophia…

“Morning, love,” Nicholas greeted her, still half-asleep.

Sophia chuckled, placing a tentative kiss on his forehead.

In all honesty she didn’t know what to say to him.

There was no rulebook on what to do after your first ever time doing the nasty with your boyfriend. If there was, you’d think Sophia had read it and memorized it all word for word to get the best experience possible.

Clarisse had given her some advice, but she was left dazed and muddled.

Nicholas seemed fine, so why was she behaving this way?

She blurted out of nowhere, “I don’t know why I feel nervous all of a sudden.”

Nicholas turned to look at her – he’d been seconds away from falling asleep again. They stayed up all night.

Nicholas blinked, “Me too.”

Sophia stared at her boyfriend.

“Really? You too?”

‘And I thought it was only me facing that issue,’ she mumbled.

So, all this time, when she was wondering what to say and how to behave and whether or not to ask him if he liked it…

He was thinking of the same things too.

Oh, it was so relieving. It wasn’t only her.

Nicholas turned on his side, eyes drooped close.

“I’d be more nervous if I wasn’t so sleepy,” he admitted.

Sophia turned on her side, smiling dreamily at him. She bit her lip.

“Now don’t fall asleep now,” she said, a hint of seductiveness in her voice.

Nicholas opened one eye partially.

Was she-?

Was it him dreaming? He was close to falling asleep again so it might’ve just been him imagining it.

Sophia’s smile widened.

She lifted Nicholas’ chin with her finger.

“Not when we could…”

She batted her eyelashes.

“Do what we did last night all over again.”

Nicholas’ eyes flew wide open. He pinched himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.

Sophia then asked the question, “Say, you and me?”

Nicholas hid a smirk behind his features. God, he was so darn handsome in the morning. His bed hair made him look adorable.

“I concur.”