Chapter 61: Motherfucker or Unbearable Truth

"Motherfucker," Damon cursed under his breath. He couldn’t help it. Everything had been going so fucking well since morning that somewhere along the way he’d started believing the universe liked him.

It had all started in the morning with Camilla; he’d woken up and gotten to feast his eyes on that naked, soul-snatching body of hers, all that mature softness and curves and her tits that made a him briefly understand why ancient people built temples for female Goddesses.

’Okay that is redundant, Goddess is enough.’

Anyway, Damon had seen enough of her to spend the rest of the morning randomly remembering pieces of it at the worst times, as though getting a supernatural system didn’t stop his brain from replaying a naked woman like a bookmarked video.

He’d later did the System Shop and its ridiculous three-minute window and Damon had spent those points like somebody had opened heaven for a limited-time sale and told him everything disappeared at checkout. Abilities, useful shit, dangerous shit, things that would’ve sounded completely insane yesterday and now belonged to him.

Breakfast had somehow gone even better. Camilla had basically admitted, in her own words, with her own mouth, that she’d been waiting for him to finally make his move. Damon had sat there hearing it with his own ears and somehow still nearly needed subtitles because holy fuck, the woman he’d been fantasizing about for like forever had been waiting too.

And he’d gotten a kiss; sure it was a small one on the cheek but it sure still fucking counted, and he’d mentally replayed that one enough times that if memories burned calories he’d already have abs on top of his abs.

After that Blackwood had kept feeding him.

His advisor turned out to be Marguerite Hale, which would’ve already been a win because she was a woman and Damon had eyes, but then Predator’s Gaze had opened her panel and Jesus Christ, that woman had problems.

’Good and expensive-looking problems hidden under glasses and professionalism.’

Damon would absolutely volunteer to study her academically if Blackwood ever introduced the course and he’d been sitting there acting like a respectful freshman while his system calmly informed him about the sort of shit she wanted a man doing to her, and somehow he’d survived the meeting without staring too long or saying something that got him expelled before lunch.

That alone deserved credit.

Soon, the Charlotte Ainsley play happened that it had almost felt scripted for him.

Well, he’d scripted it himself; Bradley being an idiot he could use so that Damon stepping in to play a hero and Charlotte literally falling into his arms in a pose so stupidly romantic it could’ve been the cover of one of those billionaire webtoon comics with her face all flushed afterward while Damon stood there playing Prince Charming like he’d trained for it.

He had landed straight in her hero fantasy. Knight. Damsel. Public rescue. Humiliating the asshole. Protecting her.

’The whole thing was practically gift-wrapped.’

And Damon had walked away from that already thinking about what he could build around it. The nice rich boy? The gentleman? Or the guy who looked dangerous enough to be interesting but somehow still helped you when things went wrong?

The prince and knight in shining armor had worked in his favor than it had in his mind and that was all Damon cared about.

He’d also built the website, and fuck, he’d been proud of that website.

Sitting through Winthrope’s giant ego massage in Belrose Auditorium while quietly building his own little side business had felt clever as hell. Damon had been there listening to some dean talk about tradition, excellence, Blackwood legacy and whatever other expensive university words people used when they wanted parents to feel better about tuition, while Damon was figuring out how many taps it should take a frustrated rich woman to get from curiosity to him.

"Four taps, maybe five. Anything beyond that and she was closing website and going back to her husband." He’d kept reciting and thought that was smart.

Sure the site looked clean, private, expensive and not the cheap male escort crap with shirtless silhouette that screamed protein powder, herpes and unpaid gym membership. Damon’s body did the selling without his face being there, the application was simple, and the whole thing looked like somebody had actually thought about discretion.

He’d sat there thinking he was fucking cooking.

’Turns out I was cooking with the stove unplugged.’

By late afternoon Damon realized the universe hadn’t been being nice to him because it suddenly appreciated his five-hundred-and-thirty-day contribution to masturbation history. It had been fattening him up before kicking him in the balls, and then after the kick was the punch directly in the head.

Apparently the universe only needed one weapon for both:

’Celeste fucking Bellamy.’

Damon dragged a hand down his face while walking through the residence hall. He didn’t even need to go over everything she’d revealed again because that shit was still fresh enough. Apart from her knowing his passwords, his porn searches, his OnlyFans subscriptions, how long it’d been since he’d checked his favorites:

The fact she’d apparently broken into his fucking bedroom before and watched him sleep. His family catching her. Lawyers. A restraining order nobody had bothered telling Damon existed.

Then she’d casually informed him he’d rejected her twice. Twice, and Damon couldn’t even remember one. Apparently he’d been triggering Psycho Bellamy before he even knew there was a Psycho Bellamy to trigger.

’Holy living hell.’

But that wasn’t the part digging at him now. That was:

’But the crazy girl has been right what she said.’

Damon slowed slightly as another group of students passed him. One girl looked at him twice. Pretty. Nice ass too. Of course he fucking noticed; his business plan could be dying in real time and that didn’t magically blind him, but even that barely held his attention before his head went right back to Celeste.

She had looked at his whole Service Path idea for what, two minutes? Maybe less. And she’d torn holes through it like she’d been waiting all year for the assignment.

The website itself wasn’t completely useless. That part she’d made clear too... yes it could work later once women already knew him and his clients wanted another session and when somebody they trusted enough shared access with somebody else and all the private shit around scheduling and booking had a reason to exist.

But what Damon had built, the thing he’d been so fucking proud of, was stupid.