Chapter 507: Elena Knows Everything

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 something absurd about her own child and was deciding whether to be offended or darkly amused.

The look that screamed

you’re saying bullshit just to make me 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-timed 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 me, about you, about enough that they’ve told me things."

"She’s—

Elena might be—"

"Do you think she didn’t notice?"

She went still. "What do you mean?"

"When I was walking with her in the garden that day," Phei said, voice low and careful, "she was

showing

me something. She knew. Without saying it—

without saying a single word

—she was letting me know that she knew something had happened between us. And she didn’t mind. Before she asked if it smelled something."

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-you

smile

that appeared at odd moments 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 message 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 somewhere a woman could actually fucking breathe.

Then the laughter shifted. Both of them arriving at the same filthy thought at the exact same time, 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 come 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 same time.

"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 sometimes. 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 time 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 comedy 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 mean you plan to give me more time?"

She rose just enough and pressed a quick, soft kiss to his lips—the peck of a woman testing the temperature of something 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.

Medium.

Perky.

Not the, sense-defying curves of some of his other women—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 metronome 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 someone to hold her without an agenda... was

his!

My woman!

She picked up her tablet from the desk—it had been vibrating—and came 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 came 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 time before asking what the money was for.

Elena had smiled.

Told him it was for investments.

"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 something warmer, something 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 a

raccoon.