My Taboo Harem!

Chapter 801: Two Ryujin Tiamats

Phei smiled against the air above her throat, the expression slow, wicked, and full of promise.

"Darling," he murmured, "I fully intend to make you forget every other song you’ve ever known... and replace it with the sound of my name breaking on your tongue."

"I trust you too much to worry it would anything if not otherworldly." Melissa said with soft trusting smile on her visage. fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm

Hell’s Paradise glittered beneath them outside, its towers and roads smouldering in gold and silver, and that light painted the underside of her jaw until she looked almost unreal, suspended between his arms and the city’s obscene glow.

Her lips parted on a breath she did not quite release, and for one clear, crystalline second, the entire world reduced itself to the beautiful geometry of her body held aloft in his hands and the absolute certainty that he would never let her fall.

Not from the dip, not from grief, not from memory, not from any god, ghost, man, monster or antique family curse arrogant enough to imagine itself relevant.

"You trust me too much, Mel." Phei whispered above her.

Melissa looked up at him from the arc of his arms, her dark eyes bright beneath the softened light.

"No," she answered, breathless but certain. "I trust you exactly enough... to know you’ll catch me even when you know it’ll cost you your life... that’s what scares me."

Something in him softened so violently it almost felt like damage.

He drew her upright slowly and brought her back against him, and as her body returned to his, something inside his chest expanded past pride into territory language had not properly annexed yet.

Pride was there, of course, shameless and golden, lounging inside him like a beast too beautiful to pretend humility.

But beneath it lived something larger, something that tasted like purpose.

Beyond the pleasure of holding his woman close, beyond the intoxicating warmth of her curves moulding to his frame and the urgent rhythm of her heartbeat answering his own, there existed one truth bright enough to ruin him if he stared at it too long: he was the reason the sadness had left her eyes tonight.

Not hidden, repackaged and not folded neatly behind that disciplined composure society loved because it allowed broken people to remain convenient for everyone else.

No, he had chased it out of her.

Phei had not been some frail candle trembling against the cathedral of her grief, heroic in the useless way tiny lights looked romantic right before darkness ate them. He had been a torch vast enough to make shadows remember they were temporary.

He had blazed through the darkness of her sorrow that had settled over her heart with such ferocity that the darkness had not merely retreated; it had been burned clean from the walls of her chest and replaced by warmth, motion, laughter and the immense fact of being held by someone who would sooner dismantle the cosmos and sell the ruins as decorative furniture than permit her to weep alone.

And yet beneath that quiet triumph, something far more ancient and sinful stirred — the dark, possessive satisfaction of a dragon who had already decided that tonight, her laughter would not be the only sound she gave him.

He wanted her gasps, her moans; the way her body would tremble when he finally stopped pretending this dance was only about comfort and let the hunger in his hands speak plainly.

That, more than the wealth, more than the System, more than the bloodline and every extravagant, terrifying gift the universe had flung at him since his awakening, was what made Phei feel like a god.

Not worship, power or the ability to bend the world into obedience if he pushed hard enough.

’This. The fragile, absurd, almost insulting miracle of making Melissa Ryujin Tiamat breathe easier.’

The melody softened into its final diminuendo, the last notes thinning through the room like gold thread drawn slowly through silk until they dissolved into the silence as gently as sugar melting into warm water.

They stopped moving, though neither of them truly separated.

Phei pulled her closer and abandoned the polite fiction of dance posture altogether, folding both arms around her with the unhurried completeness; he had already reviewed the evening’s remaining agenda and decided every item not named Melissa could go politely to hell.

His left hand remained pressed at the small of her back, where the silk had gathered warm beneath his touch, while his right arm circled her shoulders and drew her into the hollow beneath his chin.

That sanctuary she claimed with such quiet possessiveness one might think she had discovered it legally.

"There," he murmured against her hair. "See? No more disasters."

Melissa’s face remained hidden against his throat. "You count yourself as peaceful now?"

"I am extremely peaceful," he answered, voice low and melodic with the effort of hunger restraint. "Though I confess the way you’re breathing against my neck is making peace feel like a temporary diplomatic arrangement."

"You are a walking international incident with pretty eyes."

"That’s one of the most romantic things you’ve ever said to me in the last seconds."

"It wasn’t meant to be."

"Too late. I’m keeping it... and I’m keeping you pressed exactly like this until you forget how to stand without my hands on you."

Her breath warmed his neck, and he felt rather than saw the shape of her reluctant smile.

Then Phei let go of everything that was not her.

Every thread of strategy, every calculation, every ambition, every dangerous plate he kept spinning inside the cathedral of his life, all of it slipped from his grip as if some internal hand had opened and permitted the entire mess to crash against marble.

Let the Legacy families plot in their gilded parlours, let the System remain somewhere behind his eyes with its glowing mysteries and offensively theatrical rewards.

For this moment, the world could manage its own nonsense, a responsibility it had failed with staggering consistency for thousands of years but might as well attempt again.

Melissa was pressed against him, softer than thought and warmer than mercy, and her body enveloped his heart and soul with such quiet, ruinous totality that he could not have held onto anything else if nations had sent signed petitions begging him to remain politically aware.

Her breathing had gone shallow from the dance, each exhale brushing warmly across the side of his neck before pooling in the hollow of his throat.

She had buried her face there as she always did, in that private place beneath his jaw where her silence softened and her body seemed to remember how to rest.

The heat of her mouth lingered close to his pulse, and something deep, old and devastatingly patient uncoiled inside him with the satisfaction like he was watching treasure crawl willingly into his arms and then complain about being adored too much.

Phei’s hand at the small of her back slid lower, fingers spreading possessively over the curve of her hip as he drew her even tighter against him, letting her feel the slow, undeniable evidence of exactly how much he wanted her.

The silk of her dress whispered against his palm like a secret begging to be torn.

Melissa inhaled him. Slowly. Deeply; shamelessly, really, though she would have sued him emotionally if he dared say that aloud.

She breathed him like she was drowning for air, the way desperate things found shore, the way grief found somewhere warm enough to stop pretending it had no body.

It was tender, ridiculous and faintly concerning in the grand tradition of all intense love.

A medical professional might have raised questions. Fortunately, no one had invited one into the penthouse, because nothing kills romance faster than a concerned adult with a clipboard and the personality of refrigerated oatmeal.

And yet beneath that tender inhalation, something far more carnal stirred between them — the quiet, electric recognition that the dance had only been the beginning, and that the real music was only just about to start.