My Taboo Harem!

Chapter 458: Lustful Fairy: HEALING TOUCH — LEVEL UP!

Morning came through Patricia Bloom’s floor-to-ceiling windows like the city had been saving it just for him—gold and white, molten and generous, pouring in thick waves that turned the Hell River into a living mirror below.

The water caught the early sun and scattered it upward in slow, hypnotic ripples across the high ceiling, patterns that danced and shifted like breathing things, alive with quiet promise.

The blue LED strips along the walls had dimmed to faint, ghostly veins—barely there pulses in the corners where wall kissed ceiling, the apartment’s heartbeat finally at rest after the long, fevered night.

Phei stirred.

He blinked once.

Twice.

Let the room reassemble itself around him in soft focus: the deep charcoal walls absorbing the light rather than reflecting it, the navy sheets tangled like dark water around his legs, the river beyond the glass flowing endless and indifferent, the financial district’s towers igniting one by one in the distance—like a row of matches struck in slow motion, flames blooming gold against the pale morning sky.

He turned his head.

And smiled—slow, private, the kind that started in his chest and stayed there.

Patricia Bloom was asleep on his chest, curled into the curve of his body like she’d been poured there molten and allowed to cool in exactly this shape.

One arm draped possessively across his ribs, fingers splayed loose over his heart.

Her face pressed into the warm hollow below his collarbone, cheek soft against skin, breathing slow and deep and even—each exhale a small, warm sigh that ghosted over him like she was tasting him in her dreams.

Even unconscious, she snuggled closer—nose buried against the crook of his neck, inhaling his scent on every breath as if her subconscious had rewritten biology: this was oxygen now, this washome.

Her hair was a glorious wreck—dark strands fanned wild across his chest and shoulder like spilled ink, catching stray glints of river-light.

The black halter-neck dress from last night was long gone, discarded somewhere in the chaos; in its place, a thin silk camisole had ridden up past her hips during the night, leaving her bare from the waist down.

Her legs tangled with his beneath the sheets—one thigh thrown heavy and claiming over his hip, her soft mound pressed warm and still-damp against the hard muscle of his thigh, a subtle, sleeping heat that made his pulse kick even now.

She looked peaceful. Vulnerable. Soft in a way the sharp, composed Ms. Bloom—who commanded classrooms with a single arched brow and drank grown men under the table without breaking a sweat—never allowed the world to see.

Here, in the hush of morning, she was younger somehow, unguarded, trusting him enough to fall asleep mid-sentence last night and stay asleep while he simply watched her breathe.

Phei’s smile deepened—quieter, warmer.

Then, carefully—so carefully, like defusing a bomb constructed of warm skin, messy hair, and fragile trust—he began to peel himself away. Slid his arm millimeter by millimeter from beneath her head.

Eased her down onto the pillow with the gentleness of someone handling something infinitely precious.

She murmured something incoherent—not quite a word, more a sleepy protest—frowned faintly, brows knitting for a heartbeat, then burrowed deeper into the warm hollow he’d left behind.

Her hips shifted once, instinctive, so her bare pussy kissed the sheet in a small, intimate press—leaving a faint, dark wet spot of lingering arousal before she went still again, sighing into the pillow like she’d found him there after all.

He stood.

Stark naked. Six-foot-something of lean, sculpted muscle and dragon blood, a body rebuilt from the inside out by a system that didn’t believe in half-measures or mercy.

Morning light painted him in gold and deep shadow—river reflections tracing lazy paths across his skin, highlighting the sharp ridges of his abs, the thick vein still faintly prominent along his softening cock, the constellation of faint bruises her nails had left on his hips and lower back like territorial marks.

A low, appreciativewhistle—high, sweet, unapologetic—cut through the quiet from the small dark couch in the corner of the bedroom.

Eira sat cross-legged on the cushion, translucent wings folded neatly behind her like folded night, her void-ice body catching the morning light and fracturing it into tiny prisms of deepest black and violent violet.

Her crystalline feet dangled off the edge, toes pointing lazily. Head tilted, expression rapt—like someone watching a sunrise they’d witnessed a thousand times and still hadn’t grown tired of, still found holy.

“I can never get tired of this sight,” she said. Her voice like wind through frost—cool, clear, completely shameless.

Phei sighed.

Not surprise.

Just the bone-deep, soul-weary resignation of a man who had long ago accepted that his fairy companionpossessed the timing of a dedicated pervert and the subtlety of a sledgehammer dropped from orbit.

She was always there. Every single time he was getting naked, already naked, or about to be naked—materializing on the nearest surface like she had a sixth sense tuned exclusively to the sound of his fabric hitting floor.

He could be in a locked bathroom on the opposite side of Paradise, door sealed, wards up, and she’d find a way—she’d phased through dimensions, through walls, through the very concept of personal space and decorum.

He’d stopped questioning it two days of her presence in his life. Questioning Eira was like questioning gravity: pointless, exhausting, and utterly futile. Gravity didn’t care about your feelings. Neither did she.

“One day,” Phei said, walking past her toward the bathroom without breaking stride, “I’m going to figure out exactly how you do that.”

“Do what?”

“Appear exactly when I’m naked.”

“It’s a talent.”

“It’s a problem.”

“For you, maybe.”

He closed the bathroom door behind him. Not that it mattered—she could phase through walls, through locked doors, through basic human dignity if the mood struck.

But the gesture felt good. Symbolic.

Patricia’s bathroom carried on the apartment’s theme: dark, clean, ruthlessly minimal. Charcoal tile underfoot, matte black fixtures gleaming like obsidian, a walk-in shower with a rainfall head the size of a dinner plate waiting to drown him in heat.

No clutter on the counters. No parade of fifteen bottles in descending order of importance.

Just the essentials—arranged with the quiet, unshakeable confidence of a woman who knew precisely what she needed and refused to waste space on anything less.

He found an extra toothbrush in the top drawer—new, still sealed in packaging. She’d placed it there deliberately. Before the date? Before dinner? Before she’d looked him in the eye and asked him to take her home?

Prepared. Intentional.

That small act did something warm and tight to his chest—something he didn’t examine too closely, not yet.

He brushed his teeth. Stepped into the shower. Turned the water scalding—hot enough to sting—and stood under it with eyes closed, letting the pressure hammer his shoulders, letting steam fill the glass enclosure until the world blurred to white.

The system pinged.

[DING!]

[Hidden Requirements Met!]

[HEALING TOUCH — LEVEL UP!]

[Level 1 → Level 2]

[Description: In addition to increased personal healing and regeneration, Host can now heal others through direct physical contact. Wounds close. Fractures mend. Tissue regenerates under Host’s touch and other minor healing properties.]

[Note: Healing others is limited to wounds, injuries, and physical trauma. Disease healing is LOCKED until Level Up.]

Phei opened his eyes.

Stared at the notification hovering serene in the swirling steam.

He’d tried to force this upgrade. Multiple times. After the initial awakening, after the Void-Ice had erupted through him, after every major power spike—he’d sat down, poured energy into Healing Touch, and received the same cold rejection: Hidden requirements not met.

He’d assumed it was power. Raw strength.

A higher tier of awakening. Something quantifiable he could grind toward, brute-force past.

But the hidden requirement hadn’t been power.

It had leveled up now. After sex with Bloom?—after the night that had left them both wrecked and remade.

Interesting.

He tried to push it to Level 3 since the requirement—whatever it was—was now met.

[Hidden requirements not met.]

Failed?

He frowned. If sex with Bloom had unlocked Level 2, shouldn’t the path stay open? Unless…

Unless it wasn’t sex with Bloom specifically. Unless the requirement wasn’t one particular woman, but a number.

A threshold? A milestone that last night had simply happened to cross?

Number of women?

“System,” he said quietly, water streaming down his face, dripping from his lashes. “What are the hidden requirements for Healing Touch Level 3?”

Silence.

The notification pulsed once—lazy, unhelpful, the system’s equivalent of a shrug.

Nothing.

“Great,” Phei muttered, tipping his head back under the spray. “There goes my super communicative system. Absolute chatterbox, this one. Can’t get a word in edgewise.”

He used to read novels—back when novels were his only real escape, back when he’d stay up until 3 a.m. in whatever distant corner of the Maxton Mansion was furthest from Danton’s room, reading on a cracked phone screen with brightness turned all the way down so the light wouldn’t leak under the door.

The readers in the comments always said the same thing: {I prefer a quiet system. The chatty ones are annoying. Just give me the notifications and shut up.}

Those readers had never actually had a quiet system.

This one was silent as the grave—and somehow that was worse.

Because in moments like this—when you actually needed one clear fucking answer, one scrap of clarity, one single breadcrumb that could save you from days of blind guessing and second-guessing—the system’s silence wasn’t mysterious.

It wasn’t cool. It wasn’t poetic or enigmatic or some deep cosmic test of character.

It was just fucking annoying.

Profoundly, existentially, ball-achingly, teeth-grindingly annoying.

Phei let out a long, slow breath through his nose—steam curling from his nostrils like dragon smoke. He let the irritation slide off him like the water streaming down his back. He was too used to this game, too scarred by it, to let it ruin the high of the scalding shower beating against his shoulders like a thousand tiny fists.

Then—

[DING!]