She stopped.
The word had slipped out before she could slap a muzzle on it.
Phei’s ears twitched. He heard it. We both love. Present tense. Inclusive.
A word she would have amputated from the sentence if she’d had one more second to think.
He didn’t press her to repeat it. Didn’t give her the chance to claw it back.
Instead he said, "You might not believe this. But you’d be surprised at how easy and accepting Elena would be."
She pulled back just enough to look at him. Those dark eyes—sceptical, sharp, the particular expression of a mother who had just been fed sothing absurd about her own child and was deciding whether to be offended or darkly amused.
The look that scread you’re saying bullshit just to make feel better.
He shook his head, a lazy smirk tugging at his mouth. "Actually—Elena Ashford is more mature and more open-minded than you or all other people in Paradise think."
He paused, letting the words sink in like a well-tid knife. "I’ll admit, I haven’t known Elena long. A single day together and we haven’t spoken since. But she’s been talking to Sierra and Maddie actively—about , about you, about enough that they’ve told things."
"She’s—Elena might be—"
"Do you think she didn’t notice?"
She went still. "What do you an?"
"When I was walking with her in the garden that day," Phei said, voice low and careful, "she was showing sothing. She knew. Without saying it—without saying a single word—she was letting know that she knew sothing had happened between us. And she didn’t mind. Before she asked if it slled sothing."
The Ashford Madam stared at him.
Because he was right.
Not just about Elena’s behaviour with Phei. About Elena’s behaviour with her.
The way her daughter had been looking at her lately—that small, knowing, I-won’t-say-it-but-I-see-yousmile that appeared at odd monts and vanished before it could be questioned.
The increased affection.
The casual touches—a hand on her mother’s arm, a kiss on the cheek—small gestures that felt less like routine daughterly love and more like... permission? Reassurance, maybe?
A silent ssage that whispered it’s okay, Mother. I know. And I’m not angry.
"How terrifying that girl is," she whispered.
Phei laughed, low and dark, the sound rumbling through his chest like distant thunder. "She’s called the Virgin Succubus for a reason, alright?"
She laughed too—startled out of her, bright and helpless against his chest and the feeling of it all made the office feel less like a cold cathedral of power and more like sowhere a woman could actually fucking breathe.
Then the laughter shifted. Both of them arriving at the sa filthy thought at the exact sa ti, the way people do when a joke is too absurd and too delicious not to share.
"She nearly caught us," she said. "That day. In the office. If she’d co five more minutes earlier she would have walked in and—"
"And found her mother bent over a desk by a boy she’d just brought for her daughter."
"Don’t say it like that."
"That’s exactly what it was then. Gods, it felt so fucking amazing and thrilling."
She buried her face in his chest, groaning and laughing at the sa ti. "Can you imagine? She walks in. Sees us. And she’s supposed to—what? Process the fact that you’re sleeping with her mother before you’ve even touched her?"
Phei grinned, savage and unrepentant. "I think about it sotis. The look on her face. This girl who knows everything, sees everything, controls every room she walks into—and she opens that door and finds out her new favourite boy has been banging her mum."
"Stop... Banging is a really weird word"
"Before he’s even taken her on a date."
"Stop."
"The Virgin Succubus, rendered speechless for the first ti in her—"
She swatted his chest. He caught her hand mid-air. They were both laughing now—properly, helplessly that made her eyes water.
The sheer cosmic ridiculousness of it.
A seventeen-year-old seducing the mother before she’d even properly looked at the daughter. The kind of fucked-up cody that only existed in their world.
"At least I’ll feel less guilty now," she said, wiping her eyes, "when I’m with you."
He tilted his head, teasing. "Does that an you plan to give more ti?"
She rose just enough and pressed a quick, soft kiss to his lips—the peck of a woman testing the temperature of sothing she wasn’t entirely sure was safe to touch.
"If you’re a good boy,"she said.
Before he could respond she stood.
Walked to her desk.
Phei watched her go.
That ass.
dium. Perky. Not the, sense-defying curves of so of his other won—the particular size and shape that made anything she wore shift and cling with every step, the fabric pulling tight then releasing against each cheek in a rhythm that was going to give him very specific problems he couldn’t solve in polite company.
The wrap of the dress parted slightly as she moved—flashing the smooth outside of one thigh, then closing, then flashing again.
A trono of skin and fabric that had his cock twitching with lazy interest.
He couldn’t help wondering how the fuck he had scored a beauty like her. A woman this composed.
This powerful.
This achingly, impossibly elegant—who still kicked off her heels to eat sushi on the carpet and dove into his chest like a girl who had been starving for soone to hold her without an agenda... was his!
My woman!
She picked up her tablet from the desk—it had been vibrating—and ca back, settling against his chest again as she unlocked the screen.
"Speaking of Elena," she said, scrolling, "you’ll enjoy this."
She told him.
Elena had put ten million dollars on Phei. During the basketball challenge.
Ten fucking million of her father’s—wagered through the sanctioned betting pools. And when the returns ca in, she’d walked into Damien’s office, sat across from his desk, and told him she wanted forty percent of the returns transferred to a separate account.
Damien—the Ashford patriarch—had apparently stared at his teenage daughter for a very long ti before asking what the money was for.
Elena had smiled.
Told him it was for investnts.
"The entire household talked about it for days," she said, laughing. "The girl is eightteen and she’s already negotiating profit-sharing with her own father."
She scrolled further. Her laughter softened into sothing warr, sothing tinged with pride.
"She also told Damien—to his face—that if he ever tried anything against you, she’d leave the family."
"She said that?"
"To her father’s face. Over dinner. While eating dessert."
Phei shook his head. Virgin Succubus indeed. The kid was out here playing chess with her father’s empire while most girls her age were still figuring out how to use eyeliner without looking like araccoon.
User Comments
0 comments from readers