My Taboo Harem!-Chapter 285: Level Up

Love.

Weird word.

Dangerous word.

The kind that got people killed in Paradise, where affection was a registered weakness, attachment was a loaded gun someone could press to your temple, and vulnerability was the fastest way to end up floating face-down in the family infinity pool with an "accident" stamped on the coroner’s report.

But fuck it.

Fuck caution. Fuck self-preservation. Fuck the part of his brain that kept screaming this is too good to be true like a paranoid backseat driver who’d already survived one crash and refused to believe the car wasn’t cursed.

He’d already died once.

What was the worst that could happen?

A second death? Third time’s the charm, maybe.

Enough brooding.

Phei pulled up the System interface—that familiar cold blue glow flickering at the edge of his vision like frost forming on a windowpane. Notifications had stacked up like unpaid bills. Dominance Aura had hit Level 6 and then 7 during the Dean situation—apparently being edged by a centuries-old virgin dragoness counted as combat that neede fast level up.

Then got busy to check changes while he was tasting decades of repressed hunger on her tongue.

Time to push further.

He was stepping into murkier waters now. Paradise wasn’t just a gated community full of rich arseholes—it was a battlefield dressed up as a country club. Politics and power plays and people who wanted him dead, broken, or preferably both in that order. The kidnapping had proved that. He’d gotten lucky. Gotten out.

Luck was a shit foundation for survival. About as reliable as a condom made of tissue paper.

System. Dominance Aura. Level up to 10.

[Ding! Level up! Level up! Level up!]

[600 EXP consumed...]

[Level 8... Level 9... Level 10]

[New effects unlocked!]

[Dominance Aura (Level 10):

Host’s aura has elevated to CONTROLLABLE form. Host can now choose specific targets to receive full pressure. Example: Host can select one individual and focus entire aura force on them alone. Submissive women and women who find Host attractive will feel overwhelming draconic authority and desire to submit.

Upon physical contact, they will feel intense arousal and may give in to desire if Host initiates.

Note: Dominance Aura can now be toned down despite being passive.]

Controllable.

That was useful. More than useful. Surgical.

He understood the toning-down option too—public settings, crowded hallways, assembly halls, places where having every woman in a fifty-meter radius suddenly go weak-kneed and damp would cause... logistical problems.

Level 5 had already turned hallways into slow-motion porn shoots. Level 10 would be a walking war crime.

Toned down it is.

But the other effect—the first-move trigger...

Phei let that sink in slow.

Women had fantasies too. Desires. The thought of someone they wanted pinning them against a wall—or letting themselves be pinned. If they already wanted him, and he made the first move, it was like flipping a switch wired directly to their hindbrain. Instant permission.

Green light. No take-backs. No moral gymnastics required.

I’m going to build a massive harem with this alone.

More than half the Academy girls already wanted him—some openly, some pretending they didn’t while they stole glances and squeezed their thighs together in class. The administration too—those lingering looks from teachers that lasted a beat too long.

The women at Sovereign Tower whispering about him in the elevator.

The Main Legacy milfs and cougars of Paradise, bored husbands, decades of unfulfilled needs stacked like unpaid parking tickets, and yoga-toned bodies that hadn’t been properly touched in years.

All of them, one touch away from giving in.

Mmm.

The hum came out satisfied, low in his throat.

System—if I focus full Dominance Aura on someone like Brett, can I make him kneel?

[Reaction depends on target’s physical and mental strength. Weaker-willed individuals more susceptible to pressure.]

Can I target multiple people?

[From Level 10 to 15, Host can focus on up to 5 targets simultaneously. If Host withdraws aura from surrounding area entirely, this increases to 7 focused targets.]

Trade-off. Spread it thin, hit five. Pull it all inward, laser-focus on seven.

Made sense. Efficient. Merciful, even—compared to what he could do with it later.

System—what happens if the target is a woman who ISN’T my enemy?

[For MALE targets: Men in Host’s presence will feel physically diminished—unable to achieve erection, experiencing fundamental failure of masculine function. At Level 10, effects persist for DAYS after exposure depending on willpower. Full taste of current aura makes effects PERMANENT. Target will shiver whenever they see Host. Effects stack with subsequent exposure. Only supernatural intervention can reverse.]

Phei blinked.

Damn.

Derek getting a taste of this? Danton?

They’d feel fear. Real fear. The kind that lived in your bones and made you flinch at shadows. Forever reduced to wimps in his presence. Unable to get it up. Unable to look at a woman without remembering the moment their dick forgot how to work in front of the guy who broke them.

Beautiful. Absolutely Beautiful.

[For women who DESIRE Host: Dominance Aura functions as potent aphrodisiac. Physical contact dramatically amplifies arousal. They will give in if they want to—and they will mostly want to. Previous levels caused arousal spikes when Host entered room. At Level 10, a simple touch can induce orgasm if Host is skilled.

Note: Effects heightened by taboo nature of attraction. Forbidden desire amplifies response.]

Phei sat very still.

A simple touch can make her come.

Ms. Adriana. The hot neighbour. Curves that didn’t quit. Attitude that cracked a little more every time she saw him, like she was trying to hate how wet he made her.

One touch.

One.

And the taboo thing—the "forbidden fruit" multiplier—made it stronger. Married women. Older women. Women who shouldn’t want him but did anyway.

Women who’d spent years telling themselves they were above this kind of hunger.

All of them, primed. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

All of them, one touch away from shattering.

Christ.

He could already picture it: a casual brush of fingers in the hallway, a hand on the small of a back that lingered half a second too long, and then the sudden, choked gasp, knees buckling, eyes going wide and glassy and suddenly a respectable woman is biting her lip hard enough to bleed, thighs clenching, trying not to soak through her dress in the middle of a charity gala.

Paradise was about to become a very interesting place to live in.

Charm Speech!

Phei pulled up the ability, glanced at the numbers, and dismissed it almost immediately.

Nah.

It was doing fine. More than fine, actually—the persuasion effects were working beautifully, the subtle influence it gave his words had probably been half the reason the Dean situation hadn’t ended with him expelled, dead, or both in quick succession.

But he didn’t need to dump EXP into Charm Speech right now. It was already close to max, just a few levels away, and something in him—some instinct he couldn’t quite name, probably the same one that kept him from jumping off rooftops twice—always wanted to save his points for things that mattered.

Things that would change the game.

Things that would make him dangerous.

Charm Speech could wait.

Cucklord Dominance: Level 1.

Awareness: Level 1.

Taboo Multiplier: Level 1.

All sitting there. Pathetic. Gathering dust like forgotten sex toys in the back of a closet nobody bothered to clean.

What the fuck am I even doing?

These abilities only leveled up through use. Through actually cucking men. Through stealing their women and making those women forget their partners ever existed—hell, forget their own names for a minute while they were screaming his.

Through being the kind of bastard who walked into a room and left with someone else’s girl on his arm and their dignity in his pocket like loose change.

And here he was—what? Playing nice? Taking it slow? Being considerate?

By now he should’ve cucked at least ten men in Paradise. Should’ve left a trail of broken relationships, grateful women, and very confused therapists in his wake.

Should’ve been building his reputation as the man who took what he wanted and made people thank him for it—preferably while their ex-boyfriends were still trying to figure out why their dicks weren’t working anymore.

Instead he was sitting here like a—

No.

He cut the thought off before it could spiral into some dramatic internal monologue about PURPOSE and DESTINY and all that shite that belonged in bad motivational posters.

This wasn’t the time for grand announcements. Wasn’t the moment to stand up and declare "NOW I SHALL CUCK EVERYONE IN PARADISE" like some kind of sexual supervillain giving a TED Talk to an empty room.

He was just going to... do it.

Starting today.

Step up his game. Stop playing safe. If he’d decided to build a harem, he might as well be good at it. Give the people their money’s worth.

Shouldn’t he?

Yeah.

Yeah, I fucking should.

The most recent ability didn’t need much explanation.

[Hunger Touch]

A gift from the Dean mission. From making the Dragoness tremble under his hands after decades of celibacy so profound it probably had its own postal code. 5000 EXP, fifteen Charisma points, 5000 regular points, and this—an instinct woven directly into his soul like barbed wire wrapped in silk.

The description was simple: When you’re in contact with any female (body contact only), you will instinctively know if she’s sexually deprived or starved.

Didn’t require activation. Didn’t need to be turned on or off. It was just... him now. Part of his senses the way sight or smell were.