My Taboo Harem! - Chapter 223 - 223: Gravity Well: Blind Spots & Bad Bets!

Collector, she thought, watching him slide those long fingers through the trainer’s hair with the casual authority of someone who’d already catalogued her place in his inventory.

He’s building a collection. Just like me.

She recognized the pattern. Or thought she did.

Pretty boy discovers he’s pretty. Women fling themselves at him like lemmings with better hair. He catches them, uses them, discards them when the shine fades.

Oldest story in Paradise. Only variable was whose face was on the poster this season.

We’re the same, she decided, a dark little thrill curling low in her belly. Two predators. Two collectors. He takes women. I take men. We both know the rules. We both play to win.

She’d done worse with far less attractive men purely because boredom was the real killer in a trust-fund life. Had collected and ruined so many “special” boys she’d lost count—boys who thought her attention meant love, who thought late-night texts and diamond cufflinks were promises instead of receipts.

They learned too late that Elena Ashford didn’t keep souvenirs. She consumed them. Whole. Then reached for the next course.

And now she wanted to consume Phei.

Or be consumed by him.

Either worked.

Same difference, really.

She paused the video on a particularly flattering frame—his head tipped back, throat working, the trainer’s lips stretched wide—and smiled.

She chuckled—low, pleased, the sound of a predator who’d just spotted what she was sure was another predator prowling the same jungle—and almost closed the phone.

Almost.

But something made her keep watching.

On the screen, Phei was… doing something strange. His hand in the trainer’s hair wasn’t gripping, wasn’t yanking her deeper like every other entitled boy she’d filmed in secret before she got bored.

It was… stroking. Gentle. Almost tender, like he was petting something precious instead of something he’d already paid for with his dick.

The trainer looked up at him—Elena could make it out even through the potato-quality footage—and the expression on her face wasn’t just the usual post-nut daze.

It was wonder.

Weird.

Elena shrugged it off with the effortless cruelty of someone who’d never needed to look deeper.

Post-orgasm glow, obviously. Men loved to play the soft card after they’d gotten their rocks off. Made the girls feel special. Made them crawl back begging for seconds. Smart marketing, really. She’d made her girls use the same trick—cuddle for thirty seconds, whisper something sweet, then ghost until boredom struck again.

She didn’t notice the way Phei’s thumb traced the woman’s cheekbone like he was memorizing it.

Didn’t notice how he helped her stand—not a commanding tug, not a dismissive shove, but an actual hand under her elbow, like she mattered beyond the blowjob.

Didn’t notice the way he looked at her—like he was seeing a person instead of a notch, a conquest, a disposable toy.

Elena saw a collector adding another shiny bauble to his hoard.

She didn’t see a man who’d just found another incredible woman worth keeping.

Huge difference.

Too bad her collector ego had better blinds than the estate’s custom silk curtains.

The footage ended. Elena snapped the phone shut, tossed it onto the duvet like yesterday’s gossip, and flopped back to stare at the ceiling fresco of cherubs that had probably cost more than the trainer’s annual salary.

Tomorrow.

Sierra Montgomery, she mused, a lazy smirk curling her lips. The Hell Bitch Queen herself. His first big catch, supposedly.

Elena had known Sierra for years. Competed with her in classrooms, clashed at galas, occasionally formed temporary alliances when some lesser girl needed social exiling.

Sierra was cold, vicious, untouchable—the kind of ice princess who could freeze your blood with a single raised eyebrow and then sell the footage as an NFT.

But now Sierra was posting couple selfies like a lovesick teenager. Vanishing to some mystery location for days, now that Elena knew it was the tower. Looking happy—radiant, even—in ways Elena had never seen outside of heavily filtered vacation photos.

Good dick, Elena concluded with the smug certainty of someone who measured everything in orgasms and Instagram likes. Must be really good dick. Like, life-altering, personality-rewriting dick.

It never once crossed her mind that maybe Sierra wasn’t being collected like a limited-edition handbag.

Maybe Sierra was being loved.

That Phei wasn’t keeping her like a trophy gathering dust on a shelf—he was keeping her like something precious. Something he’d fight the world to protect. Something he actually wanted to build a life around instead of just a body count.

That the legendary “ice queen” hadn’t been conquered.

She’d been seen. The lonely girl beneath the armor, the one who’d built walls higher than the estate’s gates because no one had ever bothered to knock politely.

But Elena couldn’t conceive of that.

To her, relationships were transactions. Power exchanges. Games with winners, losers, and a strict no-refunds policy.

The idea that Phei might actually love his women—genuinely, selectively, with intention, care, and the kind of devotion that didn’t come with an expiration date—didn’t even ping her radar.

Phei don’t love. He collects. He uses. He moves on.

Just like I do.

That’s why we’re perfect for each other.

She smiled at the ceiling, tracing idle circles on her stomach.

Wrong.

So completely, utterly, catastrophically wrong.

But she’d find out tomorrow.

He wanted something Elena couldn’t even conceptualize on her best day.

He wanted to be chosen by his women.

Wanted to choose in return.

Wanted to build something real with women who were beautiful, interesting, good, and willing—not because they were trophies to parade, but because together they could become something greater than any of them were alone.

A family.

His kind of family.

Bound by devotion, loyalty, and the kind of love that didn’t keep score.

Elena would strut into tomorrow thinking she was meeting a fellow predator ready for a delicious game of cat-and-also-cat.

She’d be meeting something else entirely.

A man who would look at her with those ridiculous purple eyes and see… what, exactly?

If she was lucky—if there was something beneath the princess mask, something soft, something good at her core, something actually worth loving—maybe he’d see potential. A diamond buried under layers of designer armor and inherited cruelty.

If she wasn’t…

He’d see straight through her like she was made of the cheapest crystal at last year’s gala.

And she’d learn—oh, she’d learn the hard way—that you can’t collect someone who was never playing the same game.

Tomorrow, Phei.

Tomorrow we find out who’s hunting who.

She smiled at that thought.

Confident.

Radiant.

Wrong.

Poor, sweet, delusional Elena.

She had no idea she’d already lost.

The game wasn’t even hers to play.

And the prize—the real prize—wasn’t his heart.

It was whether he’d bother offering it at all.

She rolled onto her side, hugging a pillow, already rehearsing tomorrow’s opening line.

Somewhere in the estate, her mother sipped thirty-year-old scotch and allowed herself one tiny, private smirk at the irony.

Mothers always know.

And this one was already looking forward to the show.

Popcorn might be beneath an Ashford…

…but silent amusement?

That was practically a family tradition.

****

In the shadows of the estate’s east wing, another figure stood perfectly still.

Not moved.

Stood.

There was a difference. Moving implied effort. Implied humanity. Implied that physics, biology, and all those other tedious mortal inconveniences still had a vote.

They didn’t.

The Crimson Consort had been occupying this particular patch of darkness for three hours straight. The household staff drifted past her like water around a rock they couldn’t see. The air itself seemed to apologize for brushing her skin and then immediately forgot the encounter.

Five foot two in bare feet—the exact height that made tall men look down and think small, think fragile, think I could handle her.

They always learned otherwise.

Usually too late.

Usually while bleeding from places they hadn’t known could bleed that much.

She’d wanted to kill him that night.

Had been denied.

“Where’s the fun in that?” her master had laughed—so utterly chilling it made frost crawl up even her spine. “You don’t truly expect me to send my Supreme Crimson Consort to swat a single insect, do you? Patience, little red. The game’s only just begun.”

So, she hadn’t killed him.

Now he was coming here.

Walking—willingly—into the estate of the One Above, the power that would soon stand over the Legacy families like the sun stood over candles: indifferent, inevitable, and capable of snuffing them out with nothing more than a passing cloud.

Coming to apologize. For a ruined ice sculpture, of all the tragically mundane things.

Poor little Ryujin Tiamat, she thought, the ghost of a smile drifting across lips that rarely bothered with such frivolous human expressions. You have no idea what’s waiting for you.

Elena thought she was the predator in this little tableau. Thought she was luring pretty prey into her designer web, setting a velvet trap for a boy she planned to devour slowly, savoring every scream disguised as a moan.

Foolish child.

She didn’t know that tomorrow a dragon would walk through these gates thinking he was entering a den of garden-variety snakes—when really he was stepping straight into the gravity well of something far, far worse.

Something that didn’t hunt because it was hungry.

The Consort opened her eyes.

Red.

Three people, she thought. Three agendas. One boy who doesn’t yet realize the sun is already watching.

Elena wanted to own him—add him to her glittering collection like a particularly expensive limited-edition cock she could polish and display.

Her mother wanted her daughter’s affection back—wanted the hugs, the giggles, the illusion of family that money could never quite buy but a single pretty boy might accidentally deliver.

And the Consort and her Master?