My Taboo Harem! - Chapter 682 - 682: Night's Sacrifice

Tonight promised to be an ordeal of exquisite torment.

It was also going to be long — and, regrettably, far more chaste than a dragon of his particular reputation had any right to tolerate.

And also demanded restraint of a caliber he had not been forced to exercise since the last time his cock and his ever-expanding job description had scheduled a catastrophic overlap.

Which, to be perfectly candid, was basically every other day now.

Yet this evening carried a special flavor of cosmic cruelty.

For on paper, tonight had been destined as the first true night: the inaugural oceanic sleep-over, the maiden gathering of the entire glorious menagerie beneath one bed, the blessed dawn when someone else’s delightfully freezing toes would invade his calves in sacred complaint.

An orgy with his women!

He had been looking forward to it with an almost embarrassing amount of enthusiasm. In the darker corners of his mind he had already sketched a delightfully obscene floor plan of precisely which limbs would be entangled where by sunrise…

The first sleep-over-the-ocean-together, first-time-everyone-on-one-bed, first-morning-someone-else-puts-their-cold-feet-on-his-calves type of night that a harem of roughly twelve-to-fifteen women, depending on how loosely one defined the edge cases, ought to have been allowed to have.

He had been looking forward to it.

He’d had, in the back of his head, a rough mental diagram of who would end up where on the mattress and in which configuration by sunrise.

The universe, in its infinite and deeply unfunny wisdom, had other plans.

One of the Mystery Boxes was apparently poised to deliver a reward useful for enslaving his next Legacy before bedtime.

Separately — because fate clearly fancied itself a comedian — he also had urgent operational planning on the witch situation, fresh reports from a freshly broken Jonathan to review, and the mortal indignity of needing an actual working shower.

So. No harem or orgy.

No decadent, sighing cuddle-pile of warm skin and whispered sins.

No five-women-one-dragon panoramic view of every filthy adolescent fantasy finally granted flesh, breath, and enthusiastic participation.

Instead, twenty minutes earlier he had stood at the elevator bank like a man signing his own death warrant and personally escorted every woman he loved off to someone else’s suite, each farewell tasting like ash and blue balls.

Sierra had understood immediately. Sierra always did — she simply nodded, brushed cool fingers along his jaw in quiet absolution, and turned to gather the others with the calm efficiency of a queen managing a minor coup.

Elena had volunteered to sleep in her mother’s suite. Bless that girl’s terrifying adaptability.

Valentina had kissed the corner of his mouth and murmured, “I know, my love. Finish first,” in a voice so genuinely understanding it made him want to hurl the entire evening into the ocean and follow her like a possessed incubus.

And then there was Maddie.

Maddie did not take it well.

“Oh. Oh, I see.” Arms folded like a declaration of war. Chin tilted at a precise, lethal seventy-two-degree — an angle with no known early detection system. “You flew us across an Paradise. We are all here. Breathing the same recycled Japanese-mogul air. And on our very first night — the night I planned to fall asleep in a bed containing every single one of my girls and one very lucky dragon — you announce busy”

“Maddie—”

“This,” she steamrolled on with elegant savagery, “is genetically identical to the last time I had a surprise arranged for you to meet someone and you announced your own arrangements, you absolute menace.”

“I did warn you in advance this time.”

“Irrelevant. To my. Emotional damage… Phei Ryujin Tiamat.”

He had begun to apologize again — a fatal error he recognized mid-sentence.

She raised one perfectly manicured finger in solemn judgment.

“My surprise. The one I’ve spent weeks perfecting. It’s now postponed. Indefinitely. Consider it your punishment, darling. You will discover the contents of that surprise when — and only if — I decide you’ve suffered enough. It is no longer a surprise. It is a hostage. And I intend to make you pay for this with interest so vicious you’ll be begging for mercy by breakfast.”

“Maddie—”

“Enjoy your business, baby.” She blew him a kiss that somehow felt like both affection and a slow-motion assassination. “I do hope your work is immensely rewarding.”

Sierra had gently steered her toward the door. Melissa had pressed a cool, grounding hand to the small of his back in silent warning: do not engage unless you enjoy suffering.

Maddie had thrown one final, gloriously venomous look over her shoulder — she would not forgive him tonight, would forgive him by breakfast, and would extract her pound of flesh (along with several creative orgasms) in the deliciously torturous hours between.

Phei had closed his eyes for a full three seconds.

He fought the very real, very stupid urge to abandon every careful plan, chase them into their penthouse, and drown himself face-down in a glorious, murderous pile of complaints and bare skin.

He could not.

This was for their safety. Every calculated absence, night. Every hour he spent away from the warm press of bodies he craved bought them one more sunrise in which they continued, against all cosmic odds, to keep breathing.

He opened his eyes.

He let them go.

The doors closed on a delegation of mildly homicidal princesses who would almost certainly make him regret this decision in the most inventive ways possible.

The room distribution had sorted itself along predictable, slightly feral lines.

Landon and Brian had taken one look at the sprawling two-bedroom penthouse and inquired — with the hungry desperation of men who had endured far too much celibacy — whether the soundproofing between bedrooms was adequate for the evening’s intended war crimes.

The manager had assured them it was.

Both men had offered thanks with the devout sincerity of pilgrims discovering their forty-day journey ended at a fully functioning brothel.

They had vanished behind the door with their chosen companions roughly ninety seconds later.

Nothing short of structural collapse or divine intervention would extract them before morning.

Emily had claimed a penthouse further down the hall with her cadre of Simps, Catrina and Lydia — and had already converted it into something far more dangerous than a bedroom: a war room.

Phei had watched her disappear through the door with a tablet tucked under one arm and three unopened laptops balanced under the other like instruments of elegant corporate domination. She had smiled at him sweetly.

She had not, technically, said goodnight.

His harem had sensibly consolidated into a single sprawling penthouse — Sierra, Maddie, Valentina, Delilah — with the clear and somewhat vengeful consensus that they would spend at least the first hour cataloguing his many sins in exquisite detail.

Amber had gone with Yuki. By 11:04 PM, Yuki would be explaining something deeply technical to her. By 11:09 PM, Amber would be quietly praying for the sweet release of death.

Sienna had claimed a penthouse alongside Victoria. Sienna would not, apparently, be sleeping in it.

Victoria had not asked why. Victoria had been raised correctly — that is to say, was the good sense not to interrogate forces of nature.

Madam Ashford was floors down with Elena — she would be spending the evening nestled against her mother’s chest like a particularly possessive barnacle.

Melissa and Patricia had taken the suite directly adjacent to Phei’s — close enough to hear him if he called, far enough that she was not in his workspace tonight. She had kissed his forehead lastly, told him to behave himself, and walked through her own door without turning around.

Melissa never turned around when leaving.

It was one of her more quietly unsettling executive habits, the kind that suggested she already knew exactly what chaos would follow in her absence.

Which left the penthouse — the one the staff kept referring to as the Young Master’s suite with admirably straight faces, because of course Chaos had reserved one — occupied by exactly two people.

Phei.

And Cassiopeia.

The shower had been running behind the closed bathroom door for some time. Cassiopeia took long showers the way other people took religious vows — as principle, lifestyle and as a small private ritual Phei had no desire to interrupt tonight.

He had the entire living room to himself.

A soft leather-bound novel rested open on his lap — Rhythms of the Longing Distant Hearts.

He folded down the corner of the page with casual disregard, closed the book, and set it face-down on the side table without ceremony.

Work now. Reading later.

The System still had two notifications glowing softly in the corner of his vision like patient, judgmental fireflies.

They had been waiting there for hours, because Phei was a professional and had managed — barely — to resist opening his gifts like an overstimulated child on Christmas morning throughout the entire flight.

“Mystery boxes.” He was finally, officially, at the tree.

“Mystery Boxes?” Eira’s voice arrived beside him and dangerously curious.

Her small form flickered into visibility on the armrest, legs swinging, tiny hands folded primly in her lap like the world’s most innocent and bloodthirsty librarian. “What, pray tell, are those?”