Chapter 34: Instead of Iron: a Wet Pussy or Instead of Pain: Pleasure

With everything done and dusted, Damon finally left the bathroom and walked into his closet.

The lights came on soft and expensive, running down the dark cabinetry and pooling at the long mirror at the end. He stopped in front of it and started getting dressed the way some men prayed — slowly, watching himself, taking honest inventory of what he actually had instead of what he wanted.

Because here was the thing nobody in those seduction novels ever admitted: the protagonist always walked into a room and women simply lost their minds.

’One look. Instant devastation with somebody’s marriage over by paragraph three.’

Damon was not that.

His face sat in handsome and stopped there; he had a clean jaw, good bones, dark eyes that could look quiet or filthy depending on the hour and how much sleep he’d had.

It was a good face but it was not a face that made a woman abandon her life plans on sight, and he’d never once been delusional about the difference:

Take away the game, the timing, the words and that face wouldn’t carry him ten feet.

’A pretty boy with no teeth is just furniture.’

His body was lean rather than bad; Lilith had never once let him rot on a couch when there was a private gym two floors down, and he’d hated her for it approximately four thousand times and had to thank her for it still more and even more now, which was deeply annoying.

The work showed on his shoulders, chest, the long clean line of his torso. Well built and solid.

Just not the kind of body that made a woman’s mouth go dry the second the shirt came off.

Well.

’That ship has already untied itself and started drifting out of the harbor, hasn’t it.’

The Embodiment Physique was going to turn sex into his gym.

Actual gym work was slow — dedication, sweat, staring at yourself in a mirror while you grunted through the last three reps and pretended to enjoy any part of it. His new training took dedication too, it took energy as well and required discipline, even more.

The only difference was the equipment.

’Instead of iron: a wet pussy. Instead of pain: pleasure. Instead of a protein shake — well. We’ll workshop that one.’

This was so far the best contract anyone had ever signed.

Every time he buried himself in a woman, this body in this mirror would edge closer to something that had no business existing on an eighteen-year-old.

Think; an immortal’s frame, a god’s, eventually, if the system wasn’t exaggerating — and the system had a lot of flaws like not warning him but modesty wasn’t among them.

That was the future.

Right now he was a handsome six-foot-one kid with a body good enough that no woman would lose interest when the shirt came off, and not good enough to make her lose the ability to form sentences.

’We’ll get there.’

The height helped, so did the one thing Lilith had drilled into him harder than posture, harder than manners, harder than half of what she’d called forging:

Presence.

She’d taught him how to stand in a room like he already owned the lease. Stillness. The refusal to rush. The trick — and it was a trick, he’d watched her run it on billionaires — of stepping into a doorway and letting the air change without saying a single word.

He didn’t fill silences just to hear his own voice... he didn’t fidget; he didn’t chase.

Part of that had been practical on her end.

She’d wanted a son she could bring to dinners and galas and openings without hiring or dating a man for the role, and she’d built one. The rest was longer and colder and more like her: when people looked at Damon, she wanted them looking at the thing she was cultivating.

He wasn’t confident about much but he was confident about that.

And now add the new weight hanging between his legs, the scent the system had wired into him, the eyes that had gone sharp enough to count the weave on a towel — and whatever this was starting to become was going to be a problem for somebody.

’Several somebodies. Ideally.’

His hair was black and just slightly overgrown and long enough to touch the back of his neck and curl around the tops of his ears, falling forward over his forehead in a loose careless wave that he pushed back once, watched fall again, and left alone, unkempt in the expensive way and careless on purpose, which was the whole point of careless.

He pulled on a black oversized tee that sat easy across his shoulders, olive cargo pants, black-and-white sneakers, a thin silver chain, and a dark green NY cap he settled low over his eyes. The outfit didn’t announce money and didn’t beg for a single glance. It just sat on him like a guy who had somewhere to be and no opinion about who watched him get there.

He grabbed his bag, opened the jewelry drawer, and picked a plain silver Rolex without making a ceremony of it. Then the tech shelf, where he took the newest MacBook and slid it in beside his notebook.

And smiled.

Because college was the official reason for that laptop.

The real reason was the Service Path.

He was impatient.

That was the honest word for it, sitting hot and restless under his ribs since roughly two in the morning. The Conquest Path was going to take time to walk between each woman, it would take wits, timing, game, seduction and slow careful work, the way he’d wanted to do with Camilla until he saw her panel and the system mission.

The new path was going to be simple and it would take days, weeks on that path and maybe months for the harder ones.

’And then there’s the other one.’

The Service Path was straight, clean, it required no hunting, no waiting, no reading a woman for six days to learn what she liked when she’d happily tell a stranger for the right kind of discretion.

Build the profile, put it where the right eyes were, and if the first day went well he could be inside a woman before nightfall.

’Today. Genuinely today.’

He knew how those profiles worked, too — and not from research.

Two years of conversations with the porn actresses who ran those accounts had taught him the whole architecture without him ever realizing he was taking notes: the photos that worked, the language that didn’t try too hard, the way a certain kind of lonely, expensive, high-status woman scrolled and stopped and decided.

He’d paid a fortune to learn that. Might as well get a return on it.

But Damon wasn’t planning on renting space on somebody else’s site for his path.

That was the part he’d already decided while brushing his teeth; his own thing, built clean, built private, built so easy to use that a forty-five-year-old woman with a marriage and a reputation and shaking hands could get through it in four taps and never once feel cheap.

’You spent five hundred and thirty days funding those websites, Damon. Time to be on the other side of the counter.’

He zipped the bag, threw it over one shoulder, and took one last look at the mirror.

Handsome but not devastating. Not yet.

Rich kid in a cap and cargo pants, six-foot-one, black hair falling over his forehead, and behind the eyes something that had absolutely no business being awake at six in the morning.

’Good enough.’

First things first — he couldn’t keep Vespera waiting. She’d threatened an air horn, and unlike most people in this family, Vespera actually followed through.

But more than college, more than the website, more than every new toy humming under his skin—

He wanted to see Camilla’s face.

That was the thing pulling him toward the door.

After this morningnand the show she’d run for an audience of one and the sound of his own name in a voice he was going to hear at inconvenient moments for the rest of his natural life — he wanted to know what she’d do when he walked into the same room.

Would she look at him?

Would she manage normal?

’Not a chance in hell...’

Who was to say really.

He was going to find out in about ninety seconds, and his heart was already going stupid about it.

Damon killed the closet lights, opened his bedroom door, and went to breakfast.