Novel Full Chapter 1027: Fruits and Harem Man
Chapter 1027: Fruits and Harem Man
I didn’t even make it back to the main mansion before Maria called me.
She said she’d love it if I helped her spend some time with her daughter and made sure the women Luna was staying with were "good enough" for her.
I smiled as I walked down the corridor, because of course that was how Maria would agree.
Not with a simple yes, I want to come, or yes, I need this, or yes, you were right about everything and I’ve been lonely for twenty years and your speech about Luna broke something in me I can’t put back together.
No.
She agreed by framing it as an inspection.
A mother’s due diligence dressed up as the real motivation — when the real motivation was still sitting on that bed in a black lace robe, wondering what would have happened if I’d walked back to her instead of turning toward the door.
The thing she wasn’t saying lived in the pauses between the things she was — those half-second gaps where her breathing hitched, where the clinical tone softened at the edges before she caught herself and hauled it back into place like a soldier snapping to attention.
What I was hearing now was a woman who had reassembled herself in the five frantic minutes since I’d left and was desperately pretending the reassembly was the original structure.
I let her have it. Some doors you hold open without pointing out which direction the person is walking through.
Luna jumped me the second I told her.
Full body with arms locked around my neck, legs, her entire weight slamming into me hard enough that I staggered back a step before catching her.
She kissed me mid-sentence, the words "I’d love to come with you to Paris" half-lost against my mouth because she was already kissing before she finished speaking.
I kissed her back, holding her there with her feet dangling, glasses crooked again, that bright, radiant smile pressed against my lips like she was trying to push it straight into my bloodstream.
She pulled back just enough to look at me with her eyes bright sparkling searching my face for the dirty details of how I’d pulled this off.
I gave her nothing.
Just smiled. She narrowed her eyes, instantly recognizing the smile for exactly what it was — I did something and I’m not telling you what — and kissed me again instead of pressing for answers.
Smart girl.
The reason she’d originally said no to Paris was to spend the second day with her mother here and then vanish into the lab.
Mother first, science second, Peter’s international trip a distant third on a priority list that made perfect sense to everyone except the selfish part of me that wanted her on that jet.
But now Maria was coming, the lab could wait, and Luna was vibrating with a happiness that had nothing to do with fashion shows or foreign cities and everything to do with the fact that her greedy wish was coming true without her ever having to ask for it.
She didn’t know what it had cost me. Didn’t know about the slipping robe, the wet eyes, the husky "come right to me," or the walk to the door that had felt like dragging my own body through wet concrete while my cock screamed betrayal.
She didn’t need to. This was the part of loving someone that happened behind the curtain — the quiet negotiations, the brutal sacrifices, the impossible choices that made the happiness possible without the happy person ever having to see the ugly machinery grinding away.
Soon the entire estate shifted into that familiar, beautiful controlled chaos that happened whenever thirty-plus women decided to move at the same time.
Somewhere on the second floor, Amanda and Vivienne were engaged in what sounded like a full philosophical debate about carry-on weight limits. Charlotte moved through the foyer like a general, tablet in hand.
Madison materialized beside me at some point — my queen — and pressed a hot coffee into my hand.
"You look like you just survived something," she said.
"I just survived myself," I replied.
She studied my face for two quiet seconds. Said nothing and just kissed my cheek softly and walked away. Madison didn’t need explanations. She needed and my face was apparently giving her plenty.
I found Eziel and Genevieve in Eziel’s room.
They were sprawled on Eziel’s bed — Genevieve cross-legged against the headboard, Eziel lounging beside her with a book she clearly wasn’t actually reading.
I stopped in the doorway and waved, asking for permission to enter like a man who understood that rooms had jurisdictions and violating them carried consequences.
These two had become fast friends in the way women in my orbit tended to — bonded by proximity, shared experience, and the unspoken understanding that loving the same man was either going to make you sisters or enemies. They had chosen sisters without ever discussing it.
"Only if you kiss me," Genevieve said immediately, chin lifted, arms crossed, eyes daring me.
I pointed at Eziel, who was already laughing. "You realize this is someone else’s room, right? The power to set entry conditions belongs to the room’s owner. Not the guest."
Genevieve hit me with that cute, perfectly weaponized wronged expression — lower lip pushed out just enough to be devastating, eyes wide like I’d just cancelled Christmas.
"I can see what you’re doing. You’re strong-arming me into coming to stay here full time so I can have my own room to make decisions in." She shook her head dramatically. "But no."
Then she turned to Eziel and slipped her a crisp hundred-dollar bill.
What the fuck was it with these people and hundred-dollar bills today?
ARIA owed me one. And now Genevieve was bribing Eziel for temporary sovereignty over a bedroom. My entire empire ran on real estate, quantum technology, and Liberation Funds’ algorithmic trading — but the internal economy of my harem apparently ran on cash bribes and petty bedroom diplomacy.
"Eziel," Genevieve said with the gravity of someone conducting international diplomacy, "can I borrow your power over this room for two minutes?"
Eziel took the bill, examined it like she was checking for counterfeits, and said, "One. One minute. Not a second more."
She set the timer on her phone and propped it on the nightstand where all three of us could see the countdown.
I laughed at the sheer absurdity of it all. My life was a circus and the clowns were all gorgeous.
"Deal," Genevieve declared. She stood up from the bed, straightened her posture, cleared her throat, and spoke with the ceremonial authority of someone reading a royal decree.
"With the power entrusted to me by the government of this room, I hereby forbid Peter from touching any woman within these walls ever again... unless—"
She paused. Turned to Eziel. Grinned — wicked, slow, the grin of a woman who had been planning this bit for at least ten minutes.
"—unless I come in here and kiss her first and have sex while Eziel is just a—"
"That’s it! The deal is OFF!" Eziel declared, snatching her phone off the nightstand like Genevieve had just committed high treason against her sovereign bedroom nation.
Genevieve pointed at the timer — still counting, thirty-eight seconds left — and said, "There are still forty seconds remaining and if you—" she swung her finger toward me, "—don’t enter this room and exercise your duties as my man as the sentence demands, you won’t be touching me again."
I shook my head.
These women would be the death of me and I’d thank them for it in the afterlife.
"Are you girls ready?" I asked. "The van’s loaded and everyone’s waiting."
Genevieve pouted — it really belonged in a museum under a plaque that read Reason Men Do Stupid Things — and then she pounced.
Launched off the bed like she’d been spring-loaded, both feet leaving the mattress, her body arcing toward me with zero warning and complete faith that I’d catch her.
I caught her mid-air. One arm under her thighs, the other around her back, her momentum spinning us both half a rotation in the doorway. I kissed her before either of us stopped moving — deep, firm, tasting like the laughter still sitting on her lips —
Eziel watched from the bed with her arms crossed, her timer still counting down, and an expression that said I am surrounded by insane people and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
The timer hit zero. Eziel’s phone chimed.
"Minute’s up," Eziel said. "Get out of my room. Both of you."
Genevieve, still cradled in my arms, turned to Eziel and blew her a kiss. Eziel caught it, examined it with the same mock-seriousness she’d given the hundred-dollar bill, and pocketed it.
"That one I’ll keep,"Eziel said.
I carried Genevieve out of the room and I never expected her to ask to be put down. I didn’t offer.
We passed three women in the hallway — Anastasia, Sofia, and Reyna — and every single one of them looked at us, looked at each other, and kept walking without comment.
The van was waiting. Paris was waiting. The Ghost Mansion was waiting.
And somewhere in the guest mansion, Maria was packing a suitcase she hadn’t planned on packing, for a trip she hadn’t planned on taking, toward a man she hadn’t planned on wanting.
Let’s go.