Chapter 1369: The New Favorite 2: The Cuteness Effect

"You started dinner without me."

"You were busy being a menace somewhere else."

"Then I’m busy here."

She dropped to her knees in the spray, took him into her mouth, and sucked him hard again before he had finished answering. Hot water ran down her face and over the shaft. She stroked the leftover length with both hands while her lips worked the head, greedy and loud where Cassiopeia had been quiet, and Phei’s hand found her wet hair and held.

"Maddie."

"Mhhm."

She pulled off, stood, turned, and planted her hands on the tile. He stepped in behind her, set the head of his cock against her pussy, and pushed. She took him with a sharp cry that the water almost hid, her ass pushing back, her pussy clinging down what she could hold while the rest of him stayed out against her, thick and hot under the spray.

He fucked her there, one hand on her hip, the other on her tit, deep fast strokes that slapped wet skin to wet skin until she was shaking and telling him not to stop, and he didn’t, not until she came around him and he spent inside her with his mouth on her shoulder and the shower still running like none of it had happened.

She left first.

Quietly and smugly so!

Apparently believing nobody knew.

Phei had remained behind for a few minutes, amused by the secrecy, only for another woman to use almost exactly the same excuse afterward.

Then another.

By the time Phei finally escaped the bathroom, he had endured his sixth short reunion sex in roughly ten-minute installments and stood beneath the shower for several seconds afterward wondering whether his women had secretly formed a queue outside.

His women were starving for him.

Phei could hardly blame them.

The funny part was that he could actually handle their enthusiasm without becoming the absolute beast he might have been if Sienna had not already spent a week helping him burn through the worst of his accumulated hunger before bringing him home. A year away from most of his women should have turned his first evening back into something catastrophic for everybody’s ability to walk tomorrow.

Instead, Sienna had apparently performed a public service.

Phei had made a mental note to thank his wife again later.

Once he finally managed to cook without another woman deciding the kitchen required private entertainment, the feast had taken over most of the penthouse.

Like he’d promised her, the Dragon Lady received enough meat to embarrass entire restaurants.

Phei had warned everyone that her reduced form had absolutely nothing to do with her appetite, but watching a small blue-silver-white Dragon calmly consume portion after portion still became entertainment almost immediately. Her crystalline scales glittered beneath the warm dining lights while she ate with dignified focus, ignoring the increasingly fascinated group forming around her.

For most people there, this was the first time they had ever sat at a dinner table with a true Dragon.

The Dragonkin certainly existed and possessed draconic blood and traits, but this was different. The creature beside Phei was a full Dragon in every sense, merely choosing to remain small enough to fit comfortably indoors.

That distinction became painfully obvious whenever someone tried treating her like a cute animal.

Soraya started first: "Can you do that little tongue thing again?"

The Dragon Lady stared at her.

Soraya demonstrated by sticking her own tongue out slightly.

The Dragon Lady continued staring.

Noor tried next with considerably more dignity. "Maybe flap your wings?"

Nothing.

Emily leaned toward Catrina. "Ask her to roll over."

Phei nearly choked on his drink.

Catrina looked genuinely tempted.

The Dragon Lady’s eyes narrowed.

That ended the experiment before it began.

Collective judgment followed soon afterward.

Apparently she was no longer cute when she didn’t do anything they asked her.

The Dragon Lady seemed perfectly satisfied with that conclusion.

Soraya, Noor, Emily and Catrina refused to accept it, however. They had already decided they loved her if she did anything or not and seemed completely unconcerned by whether she cooperated with the image they had assigned to her.

Phei suspected his little sister was going to suffer terribly here.

Mostly through affection.

After dinner, the gathering gradually broke apart. Brian, Landon, David and several of the others eventually retreated toward their own penthouses after Phei spent around forty minutes with the men inside the game room. The Dragonkin had joined them, and whatever happened during those forty minutes remained between the people who had been there.

There had been laughter.

Someone yelled at least twice.

At one point, they heard them accusing Phei was unmistakably cheating!

Beyond that, the women received no useful information what else happened there.

By the time everyone finally settled into the cinema room, the enormous gathering had reduced mostly to Phei and his women, with the lights dimmed and some movie playing across the gigantic screen that almost nobody was paying proper attention to.

Melissa still occupied the center of attention.

That was when Phei finally leaned toward the Goddess and asked the question that had been bothering him for three hours.

"How often is this going to happen?"

The Goddess followed his gaze toward Melissa, where Soraya currently had one hand resting very carefully against the little curve of her stomach while Maddie and Sierra argued quietly over something baby-related neither of them had enough knowledge to be arguing about.

A knowing smile appeared on the Goddess’s face:

"That, my love, is the cuteness effect."

Phei looked at her.

"The what now?"

"The cuteness effect," she repeated with complete seriousness. "And this is only the beginning. For the remaining months, the baby is going to become everybody’s favorite and once the little one is actually born, you may as well accept defeat immediately."

Phei narrowed his eyes. "Defeat?"

The Goddess nodded solemnly. "You cannot compete with a baby."

Phei looked toward Melissa again.

The women surrounding her certainly supported the argument.

"You’re telling me all these women who couldn’t survive two weeks without trying to drag me into bathrooms are going to forget me because of someone who can’t even speak?"

"Yes."

"That sounds disrespectful."

"It is nature."

Phei stared at her before the Goddess’s eyes shifted toward his little sister, who had curled herself comfortably nearby after dinner.

"You’re already experiencing a weaker version of it," the Goddess added. "The moment you arrived carrying a small Dragon, half the room forgot your were away long enough to stare at her."

The Dragon Lady opened one pale eye at being mentioned.

Phei immediately wrapped an arm around the Goddess and pulled her closer against him. "Fine. Let them choose their favorites. As long as I have you, I’ll survive."

The Goddess looked up at him.

Then she smiled sweetly: "I didn’t exclude myself."

Phei’s expression changed.

The Goddess laughed softly. "I’m sorry, my love, but babies are way toooooo cute. I can’t resist them either. Once this one is born, I’ll be right there with everyone else."

Phei stared at her as though she had personally betrayed an ancient oath.

"You too?"

"Especially me."

He tightened his arm around her waist. "Fine. Then I’ll just give you all the love in the world until you remember who your favorite is."

The Goddess’s expression softened as she settled more comfortably against his chest. "You already do that."

Phei paused.

She reached up and ran her fingers slowly through the long white strands falling near his face. "And I’ll give all of my love to the baby too."

"That sounds like redistribution."

"It is."

Phei looked deeply offended.

The Goddess kissed his cheek.

He considered the matter for several seconds before looking across the room again. "Then Elena and I are going to feel jealous."

Elena, sitting several seats away, immediately looked over when she heard her name.

The Goddess followed his gaze and smiled. "You?"

"Yes, me."

"You are a seenteen-year-old with enough power to have everyone fear you and enough women to populate a small village."

Phei looked at her seriously. "That does not make me emotionally immune to being replaced by someone the size of a melon."

Elena laughed.

The Goddess covered her mouth to hide one of her own.

Phei pointed toward Melissa’s stomach. "Look at what’s already happening. Little one hasn’t even arrived yet and I’ve been demoted."

Melissa heard that and looked toward him. "You disappeared for two weeks and came back after apparently living almost a year somewhere else. You’ll survive sharing attention."

"Sharing implies I’m receiving some."

Maddie turned around. "You received plenty in the shower."

Silence struck the immediate area for half a second.

Phei slowly looked at her.

Maddie’s eyes widened when she realized what she had just said aloud.

Sierra’s head snapped toward her, Valentina immediately began laughing. Melissa raised one eyebrow; the Goddess looked up at Phei with growing amusement.

Maddie cleared her throat and attempted to become interested in the movie.

Phei leaned back into the couch with a grin. "Thank you, Maddie. I’m glad someone appreciates my suffering."

"You’re impossible," Melissa said, although she was smiling now.

Phei looked at her belly again before his joking expression softened. The truth was that he did not mind any of this. Seeing everyone gather around Melissa, watching women who had been arguing an hour earlier suddenly forget their rivalries because there was a baby to fuss over, feeling how naturally his unborn child had already found a place inside this ridiculous family did something warm to him that he had not expected.

He had spent nearly a year fighting.

Tonight, nobody needed him to kill anything.

Nobody needed Void, Primordial Blood, World Transcendent battle instincts or some terrifying new Skill.

His biggest problem was being jealous of an unborn baby for stealing his women.

Phei could live with that.