His women were still mostly out even Valentina had drifted back toward sleep after their exchange, her breathing already evening out. And Maddie —

Maddie was still drooling.

They’d all gone to bed at three in the morning — him included — though for different reasons.

Yesterday had been a full operational day for him while the women had spent it actually enjoying the island, which was what normal people did on tropical islands instead of navigating supernatural bloodline politics and the logistics of keeping a small army of Legacy heiresses from killing each other or, worse, redecorating his penthouse without permission.

Four hours of sleep. The sun through the glass walls was announcing seven a.m. with the cheerful aggression of a star that had not been consulted about anyone’s preferred schedule and did not care.

He should have been exhausted; would have been, once, but the power sitting in his chest had opinions about exhaustion, and its opinion was that exhaustion was optional.

Sleep was something Phei wanted now, not something he needed, and the distinction between those two things was still strange enough that he hadn’t fully gotten used to it.

But getting up meant leaving the bed. And leaving the bed meant untangling himself from five women who had collectively decided during the night that his body was communal infrastructure.

He started with Valentina. Carefully. Her leg was still tangled with his beneath the sheets, warm and smooth, and he slid his thigh free with the slow deliberate patience of a man defusing something that would detonate if handled incorrectly.

She stirred, he leaned down and pressed his lips to her temple — soft, lingering, the warmth of her skin against his mouth carrying that particular electricity that Valentina’s skin always carried.

Her lips curved in her sleep. The faintest ghost of a smile.

Sierra next. He turned his head and just — looked at her for a moment. He reached across carefully and brushed his fingertips down the warm line of her spine — feather-light, barely touching, just enough contact to feel the heat of her skin and the slow expansion of her ribs with each breath.

She shifted beneath his touch and made a small sound in her throat.

He pressed a kiss to her bare shoulder blade. Let his lips rest there for two full seconds before pulling away.

Delilah next; he reached down and brushed her hair from her face — gently, carefully, the chestnut strands catching golden light as they fell away from her cheek. The dried tear-tracks were still there. Faint silver lines against warm skin.

He leaned down and pressed his lips to her forehead. Held them there.

She stirred, her cognac-gold eyes opened — not sharp, not slow, but startled, like she’d half-expected to wake up and discover this had all been a dream and she was back in her old room alone with nothing but a shrine and a secret.

"Hey," he murmured against her skin.

Her grip on his leg tightened then her whole face crumpled into something fierce and trembling and overwhelmingly happy, and she pressed her forehead against his knee and breathed out a shaky exhale that was trying very hard not to be a sob.

"Hey," she whispered back.

He ran his fingers through her hair one more time and closed her eyes and leaned into it like a cat being stroked by the only person it trusted.

Patricia was the most delicate extraction. He lifted her hand gently — her fingers were warm — and eased himself sideways, replacing the space his body had occupied with a folded section of silk sheet so she’d still have something warm to hold.

She stirred.

Her eyes opened. Half-lidded and unfocused. She looked at him the way women looked at men they’d decided to love and hadn’t yet figured out how to be sensible about it.

"Where are you going," she murmured; not a question but an objection filed in advance.

"Getting up."

"No."

"Patricia —"

"Don’t want to leave this bed." Her voice was thick with sleep, the words slightly blurred. "Don’t want to leave this room. Don’t want to go out the bedroom for breakfast. Don’t want to do anything that requires putting on real clothes."

He smiled, Phei leaned down and pulled her closer against his chest — one arm around her shoulders, her face pressing into the hollow of his neck, her body fitting against his with the warm precision of something that had been measured and cut specifically for this purpose.

She sighed against his skin. Melted into him. Her fingers curled against his chest.

"Who said anything about going outside the bed?" he murmured against her hair.

She went still.

"Of course I’m making you breakfast, silly."

The silence that followed was deafening.

Patricia pulled back just enough to look at his face. Checking whether he was serious — and finding nothing but warmth and an amused mouth and those ridiculous amethyst eyes looking at her like she was the most important thing in the room, which, given the room also contained four other stunning women, was a statement.

"You’re going to cook," she said flatly.

"I’m going to cook."

"For us."

"For you all."

"In your penthouse kitchen or going to order and say you cooked."

"Unless you want me to build one from scratch. Which, for the record, I probably could at this point, but the structural engineering would delay breakfast by about forty days."

The small commotion woke the others.

Valentina’s eyes opened first — Sierra lifted her head from the pillows, dark hair falling across her face, blinking. Delilah sat up at the foot of the bed, champagne silk slip falling off one shoulder, cognac eyes wide and confused and still slightly red-rimmed, looking like a girl who’d just been woken from the best sleep of her life and was trying to determine whether she should be upset about it. And Maddie —

Maddie sat bolt upright like someone had said the magic word.

"Breakfast in bed?" She let put with excitment.

"No," Phei started, "not breakfast in —"

He saw their faces. All five of them. The exact same expression, calibrated through five completely different personalities but arriving at the identical destination of absolute disappointment.

And Maddie’s was Maddie’s — her entire face crumpling like a child who’d been promised a puppy and was now being told the puppy was a metaphor.

Phei sighed.

He looked at the bed. The absurdly enormous bed that his grandmother had presumably selected for exactly this kind of situation.

"...the bed is big enough, breakfast in bed it is then..." he conceded.

Five reactions. Five personalities. Five distinct frequencies of delight.

Valentina settled back against the headboard with the satisfied, she then pulled the silk sheet higher, arranged herself, and looked comfortable in a way that suggested she intended to remain precisely here until the food arrived and possibly for several hours afterward.

Sierra inclined her head. A single nod as though a king had just granted a reasonable petition she’d submitted through the proper channels. But the corner of her mouth softened — barely, slightly — and her eyes held his for a half-second longer than composure required, and that half-second said everything her poise wouldn’t let her say out loud.

Patricia pressed her face back into his chest and made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a groan and contained the specific relief. Her fingers squeezed his side once.

’Thank you,’ she thought. I’m not going to say it because that would be admitting I will let you fuck me with Valentina right now but thank you.

Delilah clasped both hands together beneath her chin and pressed them against her mouth like she was physically containing the happiness trying to escape from her face. Her eyes were shining.

And Maddie threw both arms in the air.

"YAY! MY FIRST BREAKFAST IN BED! BREAKFAST IN BED!"

"Maddie —"

"THIS IS THE BEST MORNING OF MY LIFE."

"You say that every morning."

"BECAUSE THEY KEEP GETTING BETTER."

She launched herself at him — full body, zero restraint, the physical affection equivalent of a golden retriever who’d heard the word walk.

She hit Phei’s chest with enough force to push him back against the headboard, luckily, he was strong, her arms wrapped around his neck while her tits pressed against him through the thin camisole, warm and soft and shameless, and she kissed him on the mouth — hard, happy, slightly morning-breath but neither of them cared.

"You’re perfect," she said against his lips. "You’re actually, literally, clinically perfect. I want you to know that."

"I’m naked and being assaulted before seven a.m. by a woman who drooled on me for four hours."

"That’s the dream, baby."

He laughed and kissed her forehead before Phei untangled himself.

As he pulled away, Maddie’s hand trailed down his chest — deliberately, slowly, her fingertips dragging across his stomach and drifting lower with the casual audacity; Maddie had no concept of personal boundaries and intended never to develop one.

Her fingers brushed the base of his cock. Just barely enough for his cock to feel the contact and react like a live wire.

"While you’re up," she said, voice dropping to something that was technically a whisper but carried the acoustic range of a foghorn, "you could also —"