My Taboo Harem!

What struck Phei first was not Dravenna’s disappearance; it was not the unfinished explanation she had left behind like a lit match tossed into dry grass or even the absurdity of the words themselves.

Sienna wants to lose her chastity to you. Tonight.

No.

What struck Phei first, as he sat on the couch with Sienna beside him, was the fact that she was letting him hold her for this long.

She was close, truly close.

Her body rested against his chest, the star-blue gown draping softly over her slender frame like frozen moonlight. The off-shoulder neckline left the elegant line of her collarbones and the graceful curve of her throat bare, while the glittering bodice followed the delicate shape of her waist before flowing into the silver-blue mermaid skirt pooled around her legs.

Her hair, usually so perfectly arranged, had loosened slightly at the temples with her soft strands brushing against his shoulder as she leaned into him.

Phei’s arm was around her, careful at first, almost afraid that too much warmth would make her retreat. But she did not and allowed the embrace to remain and keep her there as the quiet weight of his body to shelter hers while the library’s amber light softened the edges of the room.

Cold Sienna.

Aloof Sienna.

The Ice Robot herself, sitting in his arms.

It should have looked impossible but instead, it looked painfully beautiful.

Her face stayed perfectly neutral and nothing dramatic enough for ordinary people to read. Anyone else would have looked at Sienna and seen the same calm girl as always, the same cold violet gaze, the same clean stillness that made emotion seem like something she had logically declined.

But Phei could read her.

At least, he could read enough.

The faint tension in her fingers. The way she did not lean away. The way her gaze remained lowered too long before returning to his. The silence that was not emptiness, but a room packed too full of things she had no intention of naming.

She was vulnerable.

Sienna would probably have burned down a library before admitting that.

A shame, really. This one had excellent shelves.

Phei inhaled slowly.

Hadn’t everything gone too fast?

That thought kept circling him like an animal that refused to sit down.

Too fast, strange and sudden.

He was not stupid. He did not need Dravenna to sit him down and explain every word like he was a schoolboy who had misplaced the meaning of "tonight." He understood the shape of what she had said. He understood enough to know this was not some careless whim, or Dravenna being dramatic for sport and neither Sienna choosing the most psychologically destructive way to celebrate adulthood because regular cake had failed her.

There was a reason; there had to be a reason.

And he would have appreciated knowing it.

More than appreciated, actually.

He deserved that much.

If he was going to be used, then surely the basic courtesy of information was not too much to ask.

Phei paused.

Used?

Was that the right word?

It would have been, if someone were forcing him. If this had been a trap Dravenna had shoved him into a ritual and Sienna had stood there as unwilling as him. But that was not what this was, and pretending otherwise would be cowardice wearing moral perfume.

He was thrown off guard completely but not forced.

He had been told to take Sienna’s carefully guarded chastity on her birthday by Dravenna Ashford, while the girl in question sat beside him with her face cold, her cheeks still faintly flushed, and her silence looking less like refusal than a terrifyingly awkward kind of waiting.

Waiting for him to move first and to understand what she would never say cleanly.

Was he dreaming?

Was this actually happening?

Was he really sitting in the library with Sienna in his arms, after being told that he had to become her first?

Sienna?

The one girl Phei had thought tonight that would take time more her sisters.

Maybe months, years or maybe a whole century of small insults, strange gifts, cold glances and gradual trust before she allowed anyone to touch that far inside her guarded world.

What in the world was this night?

A birthday?

A trap?

A family crisis wearing silk?

Knowing his life, probably all three. Very efficient suffering.

But like Dravenna had said, Sienna was not ready for a question-and-answer session about why this had to happen. Not yet. Perhaps not for a long time. And Phei, despite every responsible thought trying to stand up in his mind, was still a man whose blood had already been turned into fire tonight.

A very inconvenient fire but a humiliatingly honest one.

He turned his head slightly, looking down at her.

The star-blue gown shifted with her small movement, the fabric catching the amber light and outlining the gentle slope of her shoulders and the graceful line of her back where it met the couch.

"Sienna."

"Do not say it," she said at once.

Phei blinked. "I did not say anything then."

"I would prefer that much."

He stared.

Then almost laughed, but the situation was too delicate, and laughing at Sienna while she was sitting in his arms after witnessing whatever disaster had unfolded with Dravenna felt like a creative way to die.

"No," he said carefully. "Actually, I wanted to ask you something."

Her eyes lifted with suspicious.

"What?"

Phei searched for a way to say it without making everything worse.

A doomed mission; words had abandoned him and joined the enemy.

"Do you even know how this actually works?"

Sienna froze then color bloomed across her face so suddenly that Phei almost forgot his own question.

It was not a faint blush this time but huge.

Sienna Ryujin Tiamat, reincarnated Nether Goddess, birthday escape driver, professional emotion evader, went scarlet in his arms.

Phei stared.

She looked away.

"We..." Her voice was smaller than usual. "We just get on top of each other and you enter your thing."

Phei held the silence for one brave second but he failed.

"My thing?"

He burst out laughing.

Sienna’s head snapped toward him, humiliation and murder flashing together in her violet eyes.

"Do not laugh."

"I’m sorry," Phei said, absolutely not sorry enough. "My thing? Is that the best you could say?"

"It is accurate."

"It is horrifying."

"It communicates the required information."

"That is all you know about sex?"

Sienna’s blush deepened. "What else is there to know, of course I know it all!"

Phei covered his mouth with one hand, still laughing. "Then no, please sorry for interrupting you, Senior. Continue. How boundless, your wisdom. May I learn from you?"

"I will leave."

His laughter softened at once, and his arm tightened around her before she could mean it.

"No," he said, smiling. "Do not leave."

She glared at him.

A very embarrassed glare.

Wonderful. Rare specimen. Should be preserved behind glass for academic study.

"I have never been interested in the subject," Sienna said stiffly. "In all my life. I have never done it. There was no use pretending otherwise."