Chapter 279: Afterglow & Aftermath

They slept like the dead.

No—worse than dead. Dead people at least had the

common courtesy

to look

peaceful,

composed, maybe a touch waxy around the edges like the funeral home had tried to Photoshop them into serenity.

These two looked like they’d been run over by a very specific truck: one manufactured entirely from dick, multiple orgasms, and

forty-five minutes

that had somehow stretched into three seconds and three lifetimes simultaneously, depending on which lobe of

Phei’s

brain you polled for testimony.

Curled together on the chaise. Limbs everywhere—an arm flung here, a leg hooked there, Sierra’s face mashed into the leather in a way that was definitely going to leave creases and would definitely make her

murderous

when she woke up and saw the imprint.

Maddie was drooling. Actually drooling. A thin, glistening silver thread connecting her lip to Sierra’s shoulder like some obscene

suspension bridge

between their unconscious corpses.

Sexy,

Phei thought.

Very fucking dignified.

The Hell Bitch Queen and Paradise’s favourite chaos gremlin, reduced to a sweaty, boneless heap of questionable fluids and

post-coital

architecture.

He’d done that.

Him.

The charity case. The reject. The nobody who used to sleep in a room that reeked of someone else’s sex because he wasn’t even worth the basic human decency of a locked door or clean sheets.

And now here he was, perched on the edge of a chaise in a hidden lounge, watching two Legacy princesses recover from the kind of fucking that left bruises in places bruises had no goddamn business being.

Funny old world.

Phei peeled himself away from them slowly. Carefully. The way you’d extract yourself from a sleeping cat if the cat was actually

two absurdly hot women

who’d clawed your back raw twenty minutes ago and might wake up cranky enough to finish the job.

They didn’t wake.

They did, however, immediately roll toward each other—filling the warm hollow he’d left like water rushing to plug a vacuum. Sierra’s arm draped over Maddie’s waist with lazy possession.

Maddie made a small, pathetic sound—

half whimper, half sigh

—and burrowed closer, face finding the curve of Sierra’s neck like it was the only safe harbor left in a world that had just tried to fuck them both to death.

Huh.

He watched that for a long moment. The two of them seeking each other. Seeking him, really, but settling for the

next-best

heat

source when the original one decided to get

philosophical

and remove itself from the cuddle pile.

Something about it made his chest do a weird, unfamiliar thing.

Not quite pain. Not quite warmth. Something bastard hybrid—like his heart had decided to attempt an emotion it didn’t have the vocabulary for yet and was just

brute-forcing

it with muscle spasms.

Beautiful,

he thought, and the word felt laughably inadequate.

Too small. Too clean. Too Hallmark for the wreckage in front of him.

Bodies marked with forensic evidence of exactly how thoroughly they’d been used. A

hickey

on Sierra’s collarbone that looked like someone had tried to take a bite out of her soul. Fingerprint bruises on Maddie’s hips that matched his hands so precisely they might as well have been signed in ink.

Reddened

skin. Bite marks. The faint sheen of sweat and other things that hadn’t quite dried yet.

And they were—

Gods.

Beautiful.

Even like this. Especially like this. Stripped of all the armour, the attitude, the Legacy princess bullshit—reduced to nothing but soft breathing, tangled limbs, and the unconscious, animal need to be close to something warm that wouldn’t hurt them (at least not right now).

This is mine,

Phei thought, and the

possessiveness

of it should have scared him shitless.

It didn’t.

His mind wouldn’t stop buzzing.

Not from the sex. Though Christ, that had been—

Focus.

The sex had been a pressure valve. An emergency release. A way to dump all the adrenaline, tension, and sheer

what-the-fuck-is-my-life

energy that had been building since he walked into the Dean’s office expecting expulsion and walked out with her taste still burning on his tongue like expensive whiskey and bad decisions.

Speaking of which.

The Dean.

The Dean!

He sat there in the amber glow of the

Hideout

and let that thought roll around his skull like a marble in an empty mausoleum.

Bouncing off walls. Refusing to settle.

Leaving echoes.

Dravenna Ashford. The Dragoness of Paradise. The woman who’d allegedly beaten the living shit out of every Main Legacy boy who’d tried to corner her back in the day—

Harold Maxton included, and isn’t that a delicious little Easter egg to tuck away for when the time came to twist the knife?

She was terrifying. Powerful. The kind of woman who could end your entire bloodline with a single phone call and still make it home in time for afternoon tea and a murder podcast.

And he’d just—

He’d walked into her office.

And he’d—

She’d kissed him back.

That was the thing. That was the absolutely batshit,

reality-warping

detail his brain kept snagging on like a shirt caught on a nail in a dark hallway. She’d kissed him back.

Grabbed his face with both hands and pulled him closer and made these sounds—these small, desperate, hungry sounds—like she’d been waiting for someone to do exactly that for—

How long had she said?

Decades.

Decades!

The Dragoness of Paradise was a virgin who’d been waiting decades for someone bold enough to—

Jesus Christ.

Jesus fucking Christ on a bicycle with training wheels and a sidecar full of orgasm decisions.

This was insane.

This was actually, certifiably,

should-probably-be-medicated-and-then-locked-in-a-room-with-soft-walls

insane.

Less than a month.

That’s how long it had been since he’d stood on that rooftop staring down at the concrete like it was an old friend offering a final hug. Less than a month since the System had slithered into his soul and gone,

["Hey, buddy, how’d you like a second chance at not being a pathetic waste of oxygen? No refunds."]

And now?

Now he had a penthouse. A harem. A supernatural ability score that made him better at sex than most people were at breathing. Two Legacy princesses currently sleeping off an orgasm coma in his general vicinity like they’d been hit with a tranquillizer dart labelled

"multiple climaxes."

And, apparently, a decades-old virgin Dean who wanted to add herself to the collection like she was checking items off a

very exclusive, very dangerous bucket list.

What the fuck is my life.