My Taboo Harem!

Chapter 813: Sweet. Wrong. Useless.

A few marks still peeked at Melissa’ body as evidence to what battle she’d fought with the dragon which she satisfyingly lost.

Phei’s gaze flickered to marks off his making.

Melissa noticed immediately.

"Don’t."

"I said nothing."

"You thought something naughty, didn’t you."

"My thoughts are private and I won’t say what I just thought to anyone, love."

"Your face is public."

"That feels unconstitutional."

"Your face can appeal in the morning."

He smiled.

Her knee brushed his. Melissa’s eyes had already sharpened again, cutting through the afterglow like a blade through silk.

"So," she said. "This important person."

"Yes, Mel?"

"Does this person have a heartbeat?"

Phei paused for a moment.

Melissa closed her eyes briefly. "I hate that pause."

"I was preparing a careful answer."

"That pause belonged in a horror trailer. Or a very expensive divorce proceeding."

"She is—"

Melissa opened her eyes. "She?"

"Yes."

"And by the sound of your hesitation, she is either dead, divine, digital, dangerous, or some combination of those delightful options."

Phei stared at her.

She leaned back slightly, the sheet slipping lower across her bare stomach. "Please do not look surprised. You have the subtlety of a cursed heir trying to hide a dragon egg under his school uniform while pretending it’s just a very large pet rock. I raised you, Phei."

"Okay, I admit... she’s... complicated."

"That word is where explanations go to die. Usually screaming."

She studied him for a long moment, eyes dark and unreadable.

Melissa exhaled through her nose, slow and controlled, and decided the universe could be managed after a shower and some strategic war paint.

"Okay," she said.

Phei blinked. "That was fast."

"I am being generous because you look sincere and so fucking cute, which is deeply manipulative of you. You make me helpless and unable to say no." She threw the sheet aside and rose from the bed with a grace that should have been illegal at that hour.

Phei smiled, it was a nice feeling to know he held some leverage on her.

Moonlight caughtMelissa as she stood; her naked body was a map of beautiful devastation with her skin still flushed from his mouth and hands, faint marks and hickeys blooming like dark petals running like a guiding map along the curve of her hips and the soft undersides of her breasts where his fingers had gripped too tightly in the heat of it.

Between her thighs, the evidence of him remained; a slow, glistening trail of his release slipping down the inside of one thigh, catching the silver light as it moved.

Melissa breasts swayed gently with the motion, full and heavy, nipples still dark and tender. She looked like a goddess who had been thoroughly worshipped and was now preparing to go to war.

Phei gulped audibly:

"You could wear anything and still dominate the room, Mel," Phei said, voice low.

"Sweet. Wrong. Useless." She glanced over her shoulder, one eyebrow arched. "Stay there. And try not to look so pleased with yourself at how you ruined me so good. It’s embarrassing for both of us."

She disappeared into the bathroom and a moment later the shower came on, water striking tile in a steady, domestic rush that filled the penthouse with an oddly ordinary sound after everything that had happened between these sheets.

Steam began to cloud the glass beyond the bathroom door.

The city glittered coldly below beyond the windows while sheets cooled behind him like casualties of a very enthusiastic war.

Phei lay still for a moment, one arm behind his head, staring at the ceiling while the absurdity of his life rearranged itself once again into something even more ridiculous.

He had just asked the woman he loved — the same woman who had been sobbing his name into his mouth not thirty minutes ago — to meet someone, another woman.

And she had agreed...

Of course after calling him out on his terrible poker face.

Phei let out a quiet, slightly unhinged laugh that dissolved into the steam and moonlight.

"Ridiculous," he murmured to the ceiling. "Truly. For all my power and yet I still can’t figure out how to introduce our complicated almost-goddess Legacy Matriarchs women without it feeling like a hostage negotiation."

He sighed.

With Infinity Control, one snap of Phei’s fingers could have purified Melissa more completely than any shower conceived by mortal engineering.

Every bead of perspiration would have vanished. Every trace of exertion would have been erased and lingering remnant of their evening would have been dismantled at the molecular level with such quiet precision that her skin would have emerged impossibly pristine — maybe even cleaner than the first moment her soul had consented to become Melissa Ryujin Tiamat.

No water, steam or soap performing its humble, temporary lie.

He could have gone further too if he wanted.

A slight flex of will, and the Void-Ice Element would have answered. Frost blooming from the invisible seams of the penthouse — not falling from the air, but weaving itself into existence with cold, obedient grace: Void-fabric could have unfolded across his palm, blacker than a starless abyss yet edged with cold starlight, softer than any silk yet stronger than imperial steel.

With one idle gesture he could have dressed her in whatever she desired — a gown fit for a winter empress, a battle dress woven from night itself, or something so exquisite that every designer piece in her wardrobe would have quietly understood its own inferiority and filed for dignified retirement.

He could have done all of that.

’Easily.’

Power, once it reached a certain height, stopped roaring and it became casual and now it sat within him, bare-chested and irritatingly handsome, treating the laws of physics like polite suggestions left behind by lesser beings.

But Melissa had already endured enough impossibilities and surprises for one evening.

There was a limit to how much casual blasphemy against reality a person could withstand before the mind began quietly packing its bags.

Besides, there was only one surprise left in the night, and that place had already been reserved.

So Phei let her shower.

He let her take her twenty minutes to disappear behind the bathroom door with the quiet authority determined to reconstruct herself from steam, shampoo, and sore pussy and as she cleaned her satisfied body while reclaiming the small, stubborn rituals of ordinary life — scalding water over flushed skin, damp hair combed back into obedience, expensive soap doing its best to remain relevant.

Sometimes mercy did not arrive as a miracle.

And some other times mercy was a Cosmic Dragon sitting at the edge of a ruined bed, pretending for twenty minutes that he was merely a man waiting for the woman he loved to get ready.

’That is almost noble.’

Almost.

The bed looked like a battlefield that had lost its funding halfway through the campaign. The sheets were a disgrace. One pillow had migrated to the floor and lay there with the defeated posture of a witness who had seen too much and would never recover.

Moonlight spilled across the wreckage with its usual shameless elegance, silvering the evidence of their ruin as though beauty could absolve poor behaviour.

Outside the glass, Hell’s Paradise Island glittered over dark water — towers, wealth, and moral bankruptcy polished until they looked almost divine.

’A city so expensive that even sin probably has membership tiers.’

Phei sat at the edge of the bed and stretched. The movement rolled through him slowly, powerful without effort.

His muscle shifted beneath his skin, but the true weight in the room did not come from his body; it instead came from what waited around him — the unseen pressure of command, the patient violence of elements that could answer before thought finished forming.

Infinity Control rested beneath his awareness like an ocean hidden beneath glass, calm only because he permitted it to be.

Void-Ice stirred at the edge of his senses, ancient and cold, carrying that solemn hunger all primordial things possessed.

His thoughts were willingly replaced by something even more better: Melissa had returned in a few minutes.

Naturally.

Melissa Ryujin Tiamat did not require the full twenty when properly galvanised.

Time itself probably filed for an extension when she entered a room.

She stepped out of the bathroom wearing a dark cashmere sweater and fitted trousers, the outfit simple enough to seem casual and expensive enough to make casual look like an inherited right.

The sweater clung to her in all the right ways — soft, dark, and just tight enough to trace the full, heavy shape of her breasts and the elegant line of her waist.

Her damp hair had been gathered into a low, severe knot at the nape of her neck, with a few rebellious strands left to soften the sharp perfection of her face.

Her makeup was minimal since it wasn’t needed, applied with surgical precision to conceal the fact that she had been sobbing his name into his mouth less than an hour ago.

The neckline of the sweater had been chosen with deliberate intent — high enough to hide the faint marks he had left along her collarbones and the upper swell of her breasts.

She looked resplendent.

She always did, annoyingly and beautifully enough.

Some people required perfect lighting, merciful angles, and a photographer willing to lie. Melissa looked resplendent while freshly showered, emotionally inconvenienced, and quietly preparing to meet someone who might invalidate several departments of modern science.

Her composure had been rebuilt and her armour had returned; the princess of the Ryujin Tiamat bloodline had reassembled herself from the trembling, breathless woman who had come undone in his arms not long ago — and the transformation struck Phei as one of the more terrifying achievements of civilisation.

She paused in the doorway, one hand resting lightly on the frame, and looked at him with teasing eyes while striking seductive poses.