Chapter 1007: Mother-in-Law Seduction Playbook!

I looked at her openly, shamelessly—no more of those pathetic stolen glances I’d been rationing like a starving man counting crumbs. Just raw, uninterrupted staring, the way you look at a masterpiece that makes you forget you were ever walking toward anything else in the first place.

"Can I say something?" I asked.

"I doubt I could stop you if I tried."

"You are—

and I need you to hear this exactly as the honest, unfiltered truth it is, not as some cheap line or strategy you can file away under ’predictable male bullshit’

—you REALLY are one of the

most beautiful

women I have ever seen in my life."

She didn’t flinch. Didn’t blush or shift in her seat. Those dark, razor-sharp eyes—Luna’s eyes, but forged in decades of ice and armor—locked onto mine, and in a voice so flat it could’ve paved a highway, she delivered:

"I’m your

mother-in-law."

"I’m aware."

"Compliments don’t work on me."

"I know. You’ve said that. And I’m not trying to make them work. I’m simply stating a fact so obvious it’s almost insulting to my intelligence to keep it quiet." I leaned forward, elbows on my knees, owning every inch of space between us.

"There is genuinely nothing else I can think about right now. I’ve been trying to have a civilized conversation about your daughter and my intentions and whatever war crimes you’ve prepared against me, but every time you cross those legs, my entire train of thought

derails

spectacularly and bursts into flames."

Silence.

Her jaw tightened—just a fraction.

The precise, controlled tension of a woman whose body was staging a quiet mutiny against the iron dictatorship of her mind.

"You’re very

bold,"

she said, "for a man sitting across from someone who could end your relationship with her daughter with one decision."

"I’m not bold. I’m honest. There’s a difference. Bold would require exaggeration. I’m actually understating it. The full, uncensored version of what’s running through my head right now would probably earn me a slap. Or a lawsuit. Or both."

"Probably?"

"Definitely."

There was a beat.

Then the tiniest crack at the corner of her mouth—not a smile, more like the ghost of one that had been executed on sight and buried in an unmarked grave. Still, I saw the fresh dirt. Progress.

"You think your charm is going to change my mind about you?" she asked.

"No. I think you’re far too

intelligent

for that level of amateur manipulation. That’s why I’m not even bothering with charm. I’m just giving you the raw,

unedited

data."

"Then what’s the point of this little performance?"

"The point, Maria, is that

I’d rather you judge the real me

than waste the next hour watching me pretend to be some sanitized,

acceptable

version of myself

. You came here to evaluate me. So here I am—fully

evaluated:

I’m the man who’s madly in love with your daughter... and who currently cannot stop staring at her mother like she’s the eighth wonder of the world. That’s the dataset. Do with it what you will."

She uncrossed her legs and recrossed them the other way. Showing off her toned thigh under the tracksuit before the fabric sighed back into place.

Deliberate? Involuntary? With her, I genuinely couldn’t tell—and that delicious uncertainty made her infinitely more dangerous.

"You’re very comfortable with yourself," she observed. Clinical. Cold. The way a surgeon notes a tumor.

"I am. Most men who are this comfortable are hiding something

monstrous.

I’m not. I simply have nothing to hide because I happen to be exceptional."

"Most

men who think they’re

exceptional are delusional.

"

"Most

men don’t have the receipts to back it up.

I do

."

Another ghost-smile flickered across her lips, murdered instantly and dragged away before it could testify.

And now I knew friends... the grave was getting shallower with every kill.

That’s how you seduce your mother-in-law... definitely

try it at home!

Very

safe.

"My daughter," she said, voice hardening as the mother shoved the woman who was falling in the devil’s seduction claws, back into her

cage,

"deserves better than a man who collects women like limited-edition trophies."

"She does. She deserves a man who treats every woman in his life like she’s the only one that matters. Which is exactly what I do. The fact that there is multiple doesn’t mean any of them

receives less

. It means I have an

infinite capacity

to give more. Generosity on a god-tier level, really. That’s why Maria... none of them is running away from me of complaining about a thing... from everything to sexual needs."

"That’s a very convenient philosophy."

"It’s an exhausting one, actually. Convenient would be not giving a damn. I care too much. It’s one of my few tragic flaws."

She studied me for a long moment—the stare that feels like someone is stress-testing their entire worldview against new, dangerously compelling evidence.

The Taboo Aura hummed between us like a secret only her body could hear. Generational Heat. Bloodline Tension. Cougar Instinct whispering filthy little suggestions to every nerve ending she was desperately trying to ignore.

She just knew the man in front of her was proving much harder to hate than her well-rehearsed script had promised.

"Are you done?" she asked.

"For now."

"Good." She stood, smoothing her skirt with the precision of a woman rebuilding fortress walls.

"I know why you’re really here, Maria."

She glanced at me, waiting.

"You came to make sure Luna and I crash and burn. To prove I’m exactly the

villain

you already decided I am. To take her home with you."

She didn’t bother denying it. Just gave a small, elegant one-shouldered shrug—the gesture of a woman who no longer saw the point in wearing the mask.

"Honesty works for me," she said. "Gloves are off."

Oh please

. I almost rolled my eyes. You’re there pretending those perfect curves aren’t already imagining my hands on them. The pretending hasn’t stopped—it’s just moved to a more expensive zip code.

But I kept that thought locked safely inside my skull where it belonged. Some truths are too potent for daylight.

"How about a game like we’re here to?" I offered.

She raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow.

"I’d love to spend some real time with you—

as my mother-in-law

—before you successfully rip away one of the three reasons I became the man I am today." I let the weight of it land. Luna wasn’t just a woman I loved. She was bedrock.

And her mother had arrived with every intention of dynamiting the foundation.

Something shifted behind Maria’s eyes. Not quite sympathy, but the reluctant acknowledgment that the bastard in front of her had just said something undeniably real.

"Let’s have some fun,"

I said, then—because the Taboo Aura was singing and her armor was developing visible cracks and her perfume was doing unforgivable things to my restraint—I added with a slow, dangerous smile:

"Pretty please."

She blushed.

Dr. Maria. Luna’s mother. The woman who had marched onto my estate armed with a dossier of contempt and a divine mandate to destroy me...

Just... blushed.