My Taboo Harem!

Chapter 853: Dragon’s Privileged

"No."

The rejection landed instantly. Brutally. Emily didn’t even let her finish the sentence — cut it off at the knees with the swift, merciless efficiency exactly like someone who had been called boring for thirty straight minutes and had been keeping a detailed internal ledger of every single slight.

"There is absolutely no way I am lending you my things after what you did in the car."

She pointed accusingly toward Lydia, her single visible eye narrowing into a sharp little glare, cheeks puffed out in full feral pout. "And don’t you dare help her either."

Lydia raised both hands at once. "I fear corporate retaliation."

"As you should."

Phei watched the entire exchange with open amusement, leaning against the Rolls-Royce with his arms folded.

The cold parted around him like an obedient tide. His amethyst eyes stayed bright with quiet delight as he watched the women he cared about tear into each other for his entertainment.

Then he exhaled softly.

Without saying anything dramatic, without announcement, or the faintest trace of performance, he simply removed his jacket and draped it around Catrina’s shoulders.

The world paused.

Catrina froze — a different kind of frozen that had nothing to do with temperature and everything to do with Phei’s hands settling on her shoulders and his jacket wrapping around her body.

It was warm. Impossibly warm. Warm in a way no jacket had any right to be. Warm the way he was warm.

’It smells like him.’

The lining touched her bare arms. Her brain was—

Her brain stopped working.

Lydia froze.

Emily froze.

All three girls stared at him. Then at the jacket. Then back at him.

"...Since when did you have a jacket?" Lydia asked suspiciously.

Phei blinked. "Since the penthouse?"

Emily frowned immediately, cheeks still puffed. "No, you didn’t. You left your jacket with Melissa."

Lydia nodded firmly. "You definitely walked out without one."

Phei looked between them, then shrugged, the motion loose and unconcerned, as if he had long since stopped being surprised by what he could do and had decided, sometime last week, that explaining it was more trouble than it was worth.

"Then did I magically create this one?"

Silence.

Emily opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Closed it again. Her rational mind was still trying to raise objections, but everything else she had seen this week kept shutting them down.

Lydia stared at him for several long seconds before both women slowly, reluctantly, arrived at the same conclusion: that around Phei Ryujin Tiamat, the sudden appearance of outerwear was not only possible, it was honestly one of the less dramatic things he had done all week.

The terrifying part?

He probably could create a jacket out of nothing. At this point none of them were willing to bet against it. The man had walked on air during a basketball game; and had made Marcus piss himself. A jacket was nothing, right?

Meanwhile, nobody noticed Catrina anymore.

Or rather — nobody noticed her because all attention had left her the second Phei wrapped the jacket around her shoulders. Which was ironic, because Catrina was currently experiencing the single most significant moment of her entire evening, possibly her entire year, and she needed, desperately, for no one to be looking at her face right now.

Because her face was a disaster.

The warmth hit her instantly — not just from the jacket but from him.

Phei’s hand still rested casually around her shoulder, pulling her slightly closer against the cold without thinking about it. His body angled toward hers and his warmth bled through the jacket and into her bare skin.

’He’s close. Very close.’

Close enough for her to smell him — something clean and dark and intoxicating, not cologne exactly, something underneath, something that was just him — and close enough for her brain to abandon every higher function it possessed and simply stop.

Her face turned red so quickly it bordered on a medical event.

Not pink. Not flushed. Red like a whole strawberry ripening in real time. Possibly a tomato. Possibly something beyond tomato that science had not yet classified.

Lydia saw it immediately.

Emily saw it too.

The two girls exchanged one look — quick, knowing. A silent, cute battle of betrayal accusations passed between them in a single glance:

This should have been me. Emily’s eyes screamed.

You brought the sweater. Lydia’s glare fired back.

Ah.

Catrina was about to combust.

Phei either didn’t notice or pretended not to — and with Phei it was always impossible to tell which.

His emotional intelligence was sharp enough to read a room in one glance, and his poker face was good enough to pretend he hadn’t.

Neither skill ever announced which one was currently active.

"Come on," he said casually, gesturing toward the boutique entrance.

Then he gently pulled Catrina along with him, his arm staying draped around her shoulders in that effortless, gentlemanly way that made the girl’s heart forget how to beat properly.

The girl nearly tripped over her own feet. Recovered and steadied herself against his side with a hand that landed on his arm and stayed there — not grabbing, not clutching, just resting, her fingers curling lightly around his bicep with careful, deliberate pressure.

But Catrian also knew this moment had an expiration date and intended to extract every last drop of value from it before the universe remembered she existed and took it away:

So she leaned. Just slightly and her head tilted toward his shoulder — not resting on it, not quite, just close enough that her hair brushed the fabric of his shirt and the warmth of his body pressed against her temple through the jacket’s collar.

Close enough to feel his heartbeat if she concentrated and to pretend, for these few steps between the car and the boutique door, that this was something she was allowed to have rather than something she was stealing.

The movement was subtle. Cowardly. Strategic. She milked it with the desperate optimism of someone who understood that moments like this came once in a lifetime and a girl who wasted them deserved whatever cold, lonely future awaited her.

She was going to ride this jacket for everything it was worth.

Every step. Every second. Every centimetre of proximity. She enjyoed it all it all — his warmth against her side, the weight of his arm around her shoulders, the smell, God the smell, the way his stride adjusted automatically to match hers so she didn’t have to hurry, the way his thumb — his thumb — shifted once, absently, against the curve of her shoulder through the jacket.

She was going to remember that thumb-shift on her deathbed.

Which somehow made it worse.

Behind them, Lydia watched the whole performance unfold — watched Catrina lean, watched the hair brush his shoulder, watched the way Catrina’s fingers curled around Phei’s bicep, watched the girl milk the jacket like it was the last warm thing on earth — and then suddenly grabbed Emily’s sleeve with violent urgency.

"I curse you."

Emily blinked. "What?"

"I curse you for insisting I bring a sweater."

She pointed dramatically toward Phei leading Catrina into the boutique, the girl practically fused to his side, glowing red, radiating the specific happiness of someone who had accidentally stumbled into paradise and was terrified of being evicted.

"Look at what I missed!"

Emily stared at the scene. At Catrina wrapped in Phei’s jacket. At the girl melting against him, vibrating with barely contained delight and the casual intimacy of his arm around her shoulders, the easy way he held her, the complete absence of effort in a gesture that was costing Catrina the entire structural integrity of her nervous system.

Then she slowly looked down at her own perfectly practical, perfectly warm, perfectly useless sweater.

Silence.

"...Curse you," Emily muttered bitterly, cheeks still puffed in silent, adorable betrayal.

Though honestly?

At that moment she wasn’t entirely sure whether she was cursing Lydia, or her own devastatingly efficient brain for choosing warmth over the catastrophic, wonderful, once-in-a-lifetime strategic advantage of showing up underdressed to a night out with Phei Ryujin Tiamat.

Catrina, walking ahead, wrapped in his jacket, tucked against his side, red-faced and euphoric and milking every last second like someone who knew the clock was ticking and had decided, with the calm clarity of someone who had nothing left to lose, that dignity could wait until tomorrow —

Catrina did not look back.

She didn’t need to.

She had already won.

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A/N:Guys, this is going to be good, look ford to it... also we meet our first celebrity... fuck I spoiled!