Dangerous Love: You Are My One and Only Bride novel Chapter 1212

Arianne instinctively shot Mark a glance. Honestly, Arianne was not quiet by nature—before eight years old, her childhood was one of joy and rambunctious guffaws, especially when she was playing with her friends. The only reason why she became so quiet was that Mark influenced her that way. In other words, Smore was quiet because he followed his father’s trait, and as the baby grew, the resemblance became unmistakable.

At night, as the two laid down side by side, Arianne asked, “Have you always been this icy and stoic since you were a kid, Mark Tremont? ‘Cause Smore’s acting quite like you when you were a kid, isn’t he?”

Mark pinched the bridge of her nose. “What did you just call me? For some reason, hearing it makes me miffed.”

She slapped his hand away. “I called you by your name, duh! Isn’t that a normal thing to do? You can’t possibly expect me to call you ‘honey’ at the drop of a hat, right? Come on, you’re not really gonna fixate on the terms I use to call you, right? What else is a person’s name for, if not to be used? Also, I’m asking you a question here! Have you always been like this since you were little?”

Mark pulled Arianne’s slender fingers into his own before fidgeting with them. “Not really. Much of it is down to nurture,” he replied. “The old Tremont family was… very different from what it is today. Everything I did—from the way I used my eating utensils to how many times I should chew my food before swallowing it—had its own sets of rules. I was practically raised as the heir to the Tremont legacy from the moment I was born; every aspect of my life was suffocating. Not even my school breaks were free from their micro-managed schedules. The only reason why I never felt like playing with others of my age was that I never had the time to form that desire at all.”

Arianne listened to him in pity. He was eighteen when she first met him, which meant she had not been there to watch eighteen years of him growing up. She could not imagine just how heavy his burdens must have been. And yet, seeing how he managed to shoulder the entire Tremont legacy without fail at the tender age of eighteen, all alone, implied that the training his family fashioned for him, though stringent and cruel, was also very foolproof. Even after a calamity had befallen the family, the surviving heir was already long past the jejune state of mind many of his peers would still be in at this age, and was thus able to carry the torch.

An intimate nickname? He was a man ten years her senior and someone who used to be her big brother figure! To suddenly call a figure like that with an intimate nickname made her skin crawl in embarrassment. Honestly, Arianne thought it was almost no different from calling him “honey.”

She could not help but shudder at the suggestion, which Mark acutely picked up but misconstrued. “Something tickling you?” he teased as he pinched her waist.

Arianne was ticklish, so his little poke immediately caused her to curl into him. “N-No! I just c-c-couldn’t say anything like t-that! S-S-Stop tickling me!!”