"You look so tense like a woman who has spent too many years being ignored by someone who should have worshipped you."

Her eyes widened slightly.

There.

He was too direct, accurate and too shameless.

Her mask cracked around the edges.

Phei did not smile this time, his expression held a quiet seriousness that made the heat of the moment far more dangerous.

"That is a crime," he said softly.

Adriana’s throat moved.

Melissa went still by the window and laughed; did he have a death wish?

Roxanne’s hand tightened near her side.

Phei’s thumb brushed over Adriana’s knuckles once more. "And I happen to have terrible respect for bad husbands."

Adriana whispered something intending for a retaliation, "Phei..."

He leaned slightly closer, not enough to trap her, or to make the choice feel stolen, only enough that his presence became impossible to ignore.

"Come with us," he said.

Her eyes widened.

Melissa’s brows lifted; everything was going according to plan.

Roxanne’s lips parted.

Phei held Adriana’s gaze, hand still around hers, the black-white portal breathing cold and restrained behind him like a waiting wound in the world.

"Not as my hot neighbor of course," he continued, voice calm, brave, shameless enough to make the air itself blush if it had standards. "or as a woman hiding behind a dead marriage. Come with us as Adriana and a friend of my women."

Her fingers tightened in his.

He smiled faintly.

"And let me show you what it feels like when a man looks at you and does not waste the privilege."

Adriana forgot how to speak.

Melissa and Roxanne looked at each other once more.

No words passed between them:

None were needed.

Melissa especially had spent enough time around Phei now to understand the shape of a moment before it fully unfolded. There was a strange, charged stillness in the apartment, thickened by the black-white wound of his portal still breathing quietly behind him and the way Adriana sat before him with her hand still caught in his. Her face was flushed, proud, startled, defensive, tempted, and terrified of how visible all of it had become.

A woman could hide many things with elegance, but hunger had always been terrible at manners.

Melissa saw it.

Roxanne saw it.

Phei saw it too.

Melissa’s gaze softened first, not with pity, because pity would have insulted Adriana and likely earned someone a lifelong enemy, but with understanding. Adriana had not merely been surprised by Phei; she had been seen by him. Properly. Cruelly. Sweetly like a woman pulled out of a dim room and placed beneath sunlight before she could decide whether she was ready to be beautiful again; and just like Melissa intended and could not take that away from her friend.

Roxanne exhaled and leaned slightly toward Melissa.

Melissa nodded.

Then she looked at Phei.

"Why not open the portal for us first?" she asked, her voice too casual to be innocent. "Roxanne and I can go ahead. You can come with Adriana later."

Roxanne added, "With our belongings too."

Adriana’s eyes snapped toward them.

The surprise on her face was immediate.

Not because the suggestion was complicated:

It was actually very simple. Brutally simple; Melissa and Roxanne were offering to leave her alone with him. Not accidentally like some misunderstood social drift but deliberately. They were stepping out of the room, out of the moment, and leaving her seated before the man whose hand still held hers as if he had every intention of not letting the afternoon escape cheaply.

Adriana’s lips parted.

"You..." she began, then stopped.

There were too many meanings inside that one unfinished word.

You are leaving me with him?

You trust him?

You trust me?

You know what this means?

Melissa’s smile curved at the corner.

It was the smile of a woman who had carried secrets all afternoon and still had enough wickedness left over to lend some to the room.

Phei’s own smile arrived slowly but cheeky, and unrepentant.

The kind of smile that made the universe glance at its laws and mutter, This boy is going to be paperwork.

He turned his head slightly toward Melissa. "Whatever my women desire," he said, voice smooth with amusement, "I will satisfy it."

Melissa’s brow lifted. "Careful. You sound pleased."

"I am a generous man."

"You are a menace with excellent posture."

"Both can be true."

Roxanne looked between them and sighed. "This family is going to kill language."

Phei finally released Adriana’s hand, but only because he lifted his fingers and snapped.

The portal responded.

It widened behind them with quiet authority, the black-white essence around its circumference folding into sharper spirals. Void-blackness deepened at its center until it looked like someone had cut a perfect absence into the apartment and convinced it to behave. White essence pulsed along the edges, not light exactly, but something cleaner and stranger, threading through the dark like divine frost.

The cold that rolled from it expanded with discipline, touching the air, the curtains, the walls, then stopping short of the three women as though Phei had given the world invisible lines it was not allowed to cross.

Adriana watched the portal with wide eyes.

It waited like a trained beast.

Melissa stepped toward Phei first. He caught her by the waist and kissed her, slower than necessary and far warmer than courtesy required. Roxanne received the same, her hand briefly resting against his chest before she stepped back. Both women turned toward the portal, but Melissa paused at the threshold and looked back at Adriana.

Her expression changed, less teasing now;

...more woman to woman.

"Do not be afraid of getting what you want," Melissa said softly.

Adriana froze.

Roxanne glanced back too, her gaze gentler than usual. "And do not hold back just because someone spent years teaching you that wanting comfort was embarrassing."

Melissa’s smile returned, glinting with mischief and mercy in equal measure. "Do try not to cum too easily, though."

"Melissa," Adriana breathed, scandalized.

Melissa winked then she stepped through and Roxanne followed.

Their figures vanished into the black-white wound, swallowed by impossible distance and Phei’s disciplined cold. The portal narrowed behind them but did not close. For one moment, Melissa’s voice echoed faintly from the other side, warm and wicked and fading.

"Satisfy her properly, nephew."

The apartment went still.

Now only two remained; Phei and Adriana.

The city outside the windows continued its ordinary little afternoon, rude enough to behave normally while Adriana’s entire life sat at the edge of a cliff and considered jumping. The curtains moved in the wind. The portal hummed softly, throwing black-white radiance across the floor, across the furniture, across Adriana’s exposed hand where his lips had been before it closed.

Phei turned back to her.

Adriana sat motionless.

...Too proud to run.

...Too shaken to speak.

...Too aware of him to pretend indifference.

Phei crossed the small distance between them and lowered himself to one knee before her.

Adriana’s breath caught.

Without realizing it, her posture shifted and her knees parted slightly as he knelt close, not from calculation, not from boldness, but from the unconscious surrender of a body that had been held rigid too long and suddenly did not know where to place all the feeling rising inside it:

The moment she noticed, her face burned.

She moved as if to correct herself.

Phei did not touch her leg or trap her and he did not smile like he had won but only reached for her hand again, slowly enough as fi she could refuse.

She did not.

His fingers closed around hers, and then he kissed the back of her hand openly, reverently, with patience that made the gesture more intimate than it had any right to be.

Adriana sighed.

...long... soft~

Almost unwilling as the sound left her before pride could strangle it.