Listen

The balcony was one of the few places in the penthouse that almost felt peaceful. Out beyond the railing, the sky was in that strange in-between state where blue had begun surrendering to orange and violet, the sun hanging low enough to paint the clouds in lazy streaks of color. Normally, it would’ve been peaceful. Hell, under any other circumstance, it would have been damn near perfect. Alas, a storm was brewing within a certain young man’s head.

Dan lounged across the wicker loveseat with one leg stretched out and the other bent, his phone resting loose against his stomach. His Chippendales outfit was long gone, mercifully replaced by board shorts and a Hawaiian shirt that at least let him feel like a human being again instead of some kind of half-naked prize stallion put on display for the women in the show. The shirt was unbuttoned just enough to let the breeze through, though he barely noticed it. His mind was too busy replaying every heated and confusing second of the Beer Pong BP Game.

He let his head tip back against the cushion and shut his eyes, though all that really did was make the memories sharper. Chloe’s lips crashing into his with all the same reckless force she seemed to bring to everything. Kaylee’s expression of pure want and desire whenever she deserved praise for her performance. Gabby’s trembling, red-faced little noises every time he was forced to bend her over and provide a more physical “encouragement.” Natalia trying and failing to maintain her pride while her outfit betrayed her, or when she was forced to endure some level of unwarranted physical attention. And Sam...

Dan exhaled hard through his nose. Sam was the one who stuck under his skin the worst.

The lap dance shouldn’t have happened. Her “Bull Rider,” as it was labeled. Though frankly, none of it should have happened. Not the teasing, not the groping, not the kissing, not the game, forcing everything closer and hotter and more intimate until the line between friends, coworkers, and lovers was beyond blurred.

His thumb shifted against his phone, waking the screen for the third time in the last several minutes. Tori’s messages still sat there. ‘She wants to talk. Of course she does.’

Tori always wanted to talk when something happened to him. She’d probably already thought through six different angles of what today meant, how it affected him, how it affected them, how it affected Sam, and whether she needed to deal with somebody over it. Vanessa was probably high on that list.

Dan stared at the text thread for another moment before letting the screen dim again.

'Later,' he told himself, though the thought felt weak and hollow. 'I’ll deal with it later. I just... I need one damn second to breathe first.'

But even breathing was getting harder as he knew Maddy would come eventually. Tonight was hers, after all.

The thought made his stomach twist in a way he hated because under normal circumstances, he would have been excited. Maybe nervous, sure, because Maddy had all the subtlety of a fireworks factory and about twice the energy, but excited. The blue-haired dork had spent no small amount of time making it very clear what she wanted from him. Every flustered joke, every shameless innuendo, every time she half-whined, half-begged about wanting him to be her first. She wanted tonight to mean something. And that was the problem.

‘Fuck…’ Dan scrubbed a hand down his face. He didn’t have it in him tonight. Not with his head this fucked up. Not with the way his chest still felt tight every time he thought about Sam grinding in his lap while the rest of the universe acted like it was cute instead of insane. Not with the knowledge that Sibling Sync still lurked in the background like some cruel little magical aftershock from an earlier challenge, ready to let his sister feel any pleasure that ed through him. The thought alone made his skin crawl.

‘No. Absolutely fucking not.’ Dan exhaled.

Maddy deserved better than him going through the motions with half a heart and a guilty conscience. She deserved more than him trying to make some first-time fantasy happen while his brain kept flashing back to his sister.

Dan sat forward and braced his forearms on his knees, staring out at the sunset with a hollow frown.

'What the hell am I even supposed to do anymore?' he thought, his fingers tightening around the phone. 'If I pull away, I hurt them ‘cause of this stupid game. Yet if I play along, I’m helping this place twist every relationship I’ve got into something else.’

The sliding glass door behind him gave a soft click, causing Dan to freeze.

For a split second, his heart jumped with the certainty that Maddy had arrived early, so when Dan pushed himself up from the wicker loveseat and turned toward the sound, that was exactly who he expected to see.

Instead, he blinked. “Kaylee?”

The mature woman stood framed in the open doorway, and for a moment, Dan could only stare.

No longer was she dressed as a lewd schoolgirl. Instead, her light brown hair had been let down from its usual low braid, spilling around her shoulders in a softer, more intimate and maternal style that heavily contrasted with the stern, composed professor he had first known. She wore a cream-colored sleeveless sweater and a pair of fitted jeans, the outfit doing absolutely nothing to hide the lush fullness of her figure. The sweater hugged her massive breasts and tapered down over the generous curve of her waist, while the jeans clung to wide hips and strong thighs that gave her a grounded, matronly beauty.

She was breathtaking, but that wasn’t what caught him most. It was her face. Her eyes, usually so measured and guarded, were filled with concern. Concern for him.

Dan straightened fully, some of the haze in his mind clearing under sheer confusion. “I, uh...” He rubbed the back of his neck and gave her a tired little smile. “Didn’t expect to see you up here.”

Kaylee's lips quirked upward in quiet amusement, and she stepped onto the balcony, the door sliding shut behind her with a muted shhhk.

“Honey,” she said dryly, folding her arms beneath her chest in a way that only made her already imposing bust more pronounced, “I am your roommate now. ?”

That made Dan pause. Then he let out a small, embarrassed chuckle, his hand still at the back of his head as he ed the absurd chain of events that had led to his former professor being assigned to live with him in the penthouse as if she were already his housewife.

“Right,” he itted. “Yeah. Sorry.” His smile weakened. “I’ve just had a lot on my mind.”

Kaylee studied him for a moment, her expression softening further. “I can see that.”

Dan shifted his weight, his fingers brushing the edge of his shorts as he looked toward the setting sun. He hesitated for a moment, not sure whether he wanted to ask the question or avoid it forever, but he had to know how he had left things.

“So… How did the rest of the game go?” Dan breathed out, trying to sound casual and failing badly enough that even he heard it.

Kaylee watched him for a second, and Dan knew she understood the real question beneath it. 'How much did I fuck things up by leaving?'

“With you gone, a good half of the transformations simply stopped functioning,” Kaylee said, leaning to one side. “Most of them required you to be near us, touching us, or being the poor bastard caught in the middle of whatever absurd condition Vanessa had written into the rules.”

Dan gave a bitter little laugh and rubbed his palm across his jaw. ‘That’s probably for the best.’

“As for the game itself,” Kaylee continued, “Chloe and Natalia came from behind and won the final round. I tried to hold our side together, but Sam...” Kaylee paused, choosing her words with care. “Sam shut down after you left. Her perfect streak ended. She missed every throw after that.”

Dan’s eyes sharpened with immediate concern. “She did?”

Kaylee nodded slowly. “She did.”

Guilt crawled up Dan’s spine, cold and familiar. The image of Sam’s face after he left filled his head, and he hated himself a little more for not knowing whether leaving had helped her or hurt her. Maybe both. Maybe there hadn’t been a good answer anymore.

“That said, Tori and Yui arrived not long after you left,” Kaylee added, watching him closely. “She saw enough to understand that something had happened, and when Sam started falling apart, your girlfriend went straight to her.”

Some of the panic in Dan’s chest eased, if only by a fraction. Tori had been there for her. It didn’t fix anything, but the thought of Sam not being alone after what happened kept Dan from sinking quite as fast.

“Good,” he murmured, bowing his head. “That’s... good.”

“The rest of the game was hollow after that,” Kaylee said, her voice turning wry but tired. “Chloe didn’t even gloat when she landed the winning ball. Natalia looked more relieved that it was over than pleased that she won. Even Vanessa felt off, though she tried to keep that bright little hostess mask glued in place. Her exuberance was forced, and I think everyone could tell.”

Dan opened his mouth, maybe to blame himself, or to say how he ruined everything, but Kaylee exhaled first and stepped forward with the quiet decisiveness of someone who had already made up her mind.

“Sit.”

Dan blinked. “What?”

He barely got the word out before Kaylee reached him, took him by the arm, and pulled. The movement caught him completely off guard. It wasn’t violent, but there was strength in it, practiced and firm, the kind of strength that reminded him this woman had once been an army officer long before she had been a professor or a reality show contestant. Dan stumbled, letting out a confused laugh as she tugged him down until they were both seated on the wicker loveseat, Kaylee planted right beside him.

For a moment, neither of them said anything. The evening breeze stirred around them, tugging at Dan’s Hawaiian shirt and rustling the loose strands of Kaylee’s hair. Down below, the distant hotel grounds buzzed with nightlife beginning to stir, but out on the balcony, it felt oddly quiet, insulated from the rest of the world.

Dan glanced sideways at her. Kaylee was looking ahead, not at him, her posture upright but not stiff. There was thoughtfulness in her face now, the kind that made Dan suspect she was carefully choosing her words.

He waited and waited. Eventually, he shifted slightly and parted his lips. “Kaylee, what-”

She started speaking before he could finish.

“Across my life,” she said, her voice lower and more reflective than usual, “as an army officer, as a professor... and as a husband... I’ve done a lot of talking.”

Kaylee’s mouth curved into a faint, wry smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “I’ve never been especially good at listening.” She gave a quiet little huff through her nose, the sound halfway between amusement and regret. “Military orders, maybe. But other things… Perhaps that’s why my marriage failed.”

She paused, her gaze dropping. “And why my daughter is the way she is.”

Dan turned more fully toward her at that, his brow lifting. “Kaylee, Jess isn’t-”

Whatever he had meant to say died in his throat because suddenly Kaylee’s hands were on him. One slipped behind his head, the other cupped the side of it, and before Dan could process what was happening, Kaylee pulled him sideways and down into the embrace of her chest.

His face met softness. Warmth. An overwhelming, plush, almost absurdly comforting softness that swallowed his protest before it could even form. Dan’s eyes widened for all of half a second, then the entire world seemed to go still.

The tension in his body, wound so tight all evening that he had barely realized how badly it hurt, began to melt. His head rested against the heavy, yielding fullness of Kaylee’s bust, cushioned by the cream sweater stretched over her breasts. The scent of her filled his senses, and the strong yet soft hands that had trapped him there began, somewhat awkwardly, to stroke through his hair.

Dan’s shoulders sagged. A breath left him, slow and shaky, like something deep inside him had finally been permitted to unclench.

Kaylee, still holding him there, spoke quietly above him. “Do you my transformation?”

Dan, already halfway lost in the magical warmth of her embrace, didn’t answer right away.

Kaylee continued anyway. “Dinner, Bath, Breasts, or Me?” There was an embarrassed sort of humor in her tone now, as if she was still a little baffled by saying the words aloud. “At the time, I didn’t fully understand the practicality of it.”

Her fingers combed through his hair again, surer this time. “I reading the description and thinking it was one more ridiculous bit of supernatural vulgarity. Lewd and embarrassing in a way that I knew the universe would know I’d hate. How my breasts could ‘bring bliss and satisfaction to both myself and others when enveloped in their tenderness.’”

Dan felt his face heat slightly at hearing the transformation paraphrased so bluntly while his head was currently buried in the very evidence of it. But any embarrassment was rapidly drowned under the incredible sense of peace flowing through him. It wasn’t just physical softness. There was something almost magical in it, some enchanted maternal warmth that seeped through his body and quieted the noise in his head.

Kaylee’s voice gentled. “But right now,” she murmured, “I think I understand its purpose.” Her hands stroked over his hair again, one settling protectively at the back of his head. “It’s for this.”

Dan didn’t move.

“It’s to help someone who is carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders,” she said softly, “find a moment of peace.”

Those words hit harder than he expected, maybe because they were true. Maybe because nobody had said it out loud yet.

Dan had been drowning in guilt and confusion and dread ever since the Beer Pong event ended, hell, maybe ever since this entire show began. But the moment Kaylee named it, all the pressure in his chest felt real in a way it hadn’t before. Not imagined or exaggerated. Just... weight. And somehow, in the crook of her arms and pressed against the softness of her breasts, that weight didn’t feel quite so unbearable.

Kaylee shifted just enough to better cradle him without pulling him away, and Dan felt the movement of her deep breath above him.

“So,” she asked gently, “what’s on your mind? I’m listening.”

Kaylee said nothing else. She only held him there, one arm firm around his shoulders while her other hand continued its slow, awkward path through his hair. Dan could feel her breathing against him, steady and warm, and the gentle rise and fall of her chest made it dangerously easy to let his own breathing fall into rhythm with hers. The magic of her transformation dulled the jagged edges of his thoughts, but it didn’t erase them. If anything, it made the words easier to reach, like Kaylee’s embrace had lowered a bridge across some ugly gap inside him.

“I’ve been acting like this is all just... happening,” Dan itted, his voice muffled against the cream-colored sweater stretched over her bust. “Like I’m stuck in it too, so I might as well go along with whatever insane thing Vanessa throws at us next. The games, the transformations, the flirting, the points, the whole damn harem protagonist fantasy.”

His fingers tightened slightly against Kaylee’s side, not enough to hurt, but enough to anchor himself to something solid. “And I hate saying that, because part of it has been good. More than good. Tori loves me. Maddy loves me. Yui, I think, loves me. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this wanted in my entire life.”

Kaylee’s fingers paused briefly before resuming, brushing through his hair with more confidence than before.

Dan swallowed, shame sitting heavy in his throat. “Before this, I was just Dan Whitaker. Reliable guy. Friendly guy. The guy people could count on, sure, but not the guy anyone lost their mind over. Jess sure didn’t…”

He paused for a moment, expecting Kaylee to say something in response to the mention of her daughter, but she was true to her word. She was just listening. So he continued.

“...Then suddenly I’m here, and there are beautiful women all over me, kissing me, sleeping with me, telling me I matter more than anything.” His laugh was small, bitter, and embarrassed. “I got caught up in it. Of course I did. I wanted to believe it was all some weird gift from the universe. Like maybe, after all those years of being alone and watching everyone else find someone, it was finally my turn.”

“That is not a crime, Honey,” Kaylee said quietly, her hand settling against the back of his head.

“No,” Dan murmured. “But ignoring the cost might be.”

That made Kaylee’s hand slow again.

Dan closed his eyes tighter, letting the softness around him keep him from retreating into silence. “Because while I’ve been living out this ridiculous fantasy, everyone else has been getting warped around me. Their bodies, their personalities, their memories, their lives. Tori and Maddy are thriving, yeah, and I’m grateful for that, but that doesn’t change the fact that they didn’t ask to become women. Well… Maddy wanted it, but none of you did. You were all men before this stupid show grabbed us. You had your own lives, your own plans, your own identities, and now you’re all being shoved into these roles because I got picked as the Master.”

His voice cracked slightly on the title, and he hated how poisonous it sounded in his mouth.

“If Vanessa had picked anyone else, none of this would have happened,” Dan continued, the words coming faster now. “Tori would still be just my best friend, not my girlfriend with a body and life built around loving me. Maddy would still be my gaming buddy with a crush, not some blue-haired bombshell getting pushed toward giving me her first time on a schedule. Yui would still be that sarcastic friend from college I drifted away from, instead of a girl who has literally snuck into my room to suck me off. Chloe would be that bully from my distant memory, instead of some sexy tomboy forced into a different kind of physical confrontation. Gabby would still be my friend from work, not treated like a toy, getting off on being spanked in front of a crowd. Natalia would still be my assistant manager instead of being my personal secretary, constantly getting stripped down and getting off to my orders. Then… You would still be my old professor and father of my somewhat girlfriend instead of my housewife roommate with magic tits.”

Kaylee huffed, and despite everything, there was a faint note of amusement in it. “When you list it all at once, it does sound somewhat excessive.”

Dan gave a weak, helpless laugh into her chest. “Somewhat?”

“All right,” Kaylee conceded, her lips curving above him. “Catastrophically excessive.”

The tiny bit of levity didn’t last long. Dan’s shoulders sagged again as the thought he’d been trying to avoid came back, larger than everything else. “And Sam,” he whispered.

Kaylee’s arm around him tightened.

“Sam was the slap in the face I needed, I guess.” He paused, thinking hard about his next words and how to convey them. “She’s my sister. I… I don’t care what the world says now. I don’t care what magic changed or what everyone else thinks is normal. I what she is to me. I helping her with homework, teasing her about stupid crushes, and worrying about her when she started college. Then today she was on my lap, moving like that, looking at me like...”

He stopped, unable to finish. Kaylee did not force him to.

“That broke something,” Dan whispered after a moment. “Because suddenly I wasn’t in a fantasy anymore. I was watching the show turn my little sister into another contestant. Another girl being pushed toward me. Another body, another relationship, another boundary rewritten because the audience wants drama and ratings.” His breath shuddered. “And no one thinks it’s wrong but me. Not Sam. Not the girls. Not the universe. Just me.”

Kaylee’s hand moved to the back of his neck, thumb rubbing a slow line beneath his hair.

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do,” Dan said. “If I keep getting closer to everyone, the show rewards it. More transformations, more intimacy, more warped memories, more ways to push us together until nobody can tell where choice ends and magic starts. But if I pull away, the show punishes them. It humiliates them, tempts them, twists them, throws them into situations anyway. So either I accept the fantasy and become the selfish bastard at the center of it, or I reject it and watch them suffer while pretending that makes me noble.”

He let out a long, exhausted breath, and for a moment, there was nothing but the distant hum of the hotel below and Kaylee’s steady warmth around him.

“I want love,” he itted, the confession quieter than all the rest. “I want it so badly it scares me. I want Tori. I want Maddy. I want Yui. Maybe I’m starting to want some of the others too, and that scares me even more.” His fingers loosened against Kaylee’s sweater. “But I don’t want love that comes at everyone else’s expense. I don’t want to be the reason all of you become perverted caricatures of yourselves.”

Kaylee remained quiet long after he finished. Dan could feel the shape of her silence, not empty or uncertain, but deliberate. She was not rushing to correct him. She was not lecturing him. She was listening, just as she promised.

Then her hand ed through his hair again, and something in the motion made her expression shift.

A memory rose in Kaylee’s mind, old enough that it should have belonged to someone else.

Not Kaylee Malone, stern former professor and reluctant housewife of a supernatural harem hotel. Kaiden Malone, tired army father, sitting on an old, weathered sofa that had survived two moves, one marriage, and far too many spilled drinks. Jess had been small then, all sharp elbows and messy hair, stomping into the living room with red eyes and a trembling lower lip as if the world had personally betrayed her during recess. Some classroom friend had said something cruel. Some childish alliance had broken. Some playground kingdom had collapsed before snack time.

Kaiden had been exhausted. He had paperwork to review, dishes in the sink, and a headache sitting behind one eye. Yet Jess had climbed right into his lap without asking, shoved her face against his chest, and mumbled every brokenhearted detail into his shirt while he sat there with one arm around her. He ed the temptation to tell her it wasn’t that serious. He ed biting his tongue because, to her, it was that serious. He ed not having a single useful answer.

And he ed Jess calming anyway.

Not because he solved it. Not because he understood all the intricate politics of children and crayons and who got to sit beside whom. She calmed because he held her, because he stayed, and because he let her spill all that hurt somewhere safe.

Kaylee looked down at Dan pressed against her chest, older than Jess had been and weighed down by problems far more obscene and impossible than playground drama, and something in her softened.

The world had rewritten her name, her body, her role, even the shape of her desires. It had made her younger, curvier, more maternal in ways that bordered on absurd, and apparently equipped her with breasts that could soothe a grown man half to sleep. But the part of her that had once held her daughter through tears on an ugly old sofa had not been replaced.

It was still there. She was still there.

“Honey,” Kaylee said gently.

He shifted slightly, but did not pull away. “Yeah?”

“I cannot pretend any of this is fair,” Kaylee said, her voice low above him. “It is not. I cannot pretend the show has not changed us, because it has. It changed our bodies, our histories, our instincts, our relationships, and in my case, it gave me a figure meant to seemingly comfort my depressed companions.”

Despite himself, Dan snorted weakly against her.

“But,” Kaylee continued, her hand settling against his hair, “change does not mean erasure. I who I used to be. I my career, my marriage, my daughter, my mistakes. I the man I used to be, and yet I am not walking around as some hollow doll wearing his memories. I am Kaylee Malone.” Her expression firmed, warm but resolute. “Whatever else the show has done to me, that has not changed.”

Dan slowly opened his eyes against her sweater.

“And I believe that is true of the others as well,” Kaylee said. “Tori is still loyal to you because loyalty was already in her bones. Maddy adores you because that affection existed before the show poured fuel on it. Yui is still a sly little menace because no transformation on earth could manufacture that much smugness from nothing. Chloe is still brash. Gabby is still shy. Natalia is still competitive enough to in completely optional games just to win despite being humiliated along the way. We have been changed, yes, but we have not been reduced to nothing but the changes.”

Dan was quiet for a few seconds. The warmth around him still felt good, still impossibly peaceful, but it no longer smothered the weight in his chest. It simply made the weight easier to hold.

“What about you?” he asked.

Kaylee glanced down. “What about me?”

Dan hesitated, then finally shifted enough to speak more clearly, though he still remained held against her. “Are you fine with it? Really? The changes. The housewife thing. The way you act around me now. The way you...” His face heated as a very recent memory forced its way to the front of his mind. “The way you literally hand-washed me last night.”

Kaylee’s cheeks colored, and for the first time since stepping onto the balcony, her composure cracked into something almost bashful. “That was a practical response to an impractical transformation.”

Dan lifted his head just enough to give her a look. “Kaylee.”

“It was also deeply inappropriate, yet immensely satisfying,” she itted, clearing her throat as her blush deepened. “There. Happy?”

“Not sure happy is the word I’d use,” Dan muttered.

Kaylee let out a dry chuckle, then leaned back enough to let him breathe without fully releasing him.

“Am I fine with all of it? No. Of course not. My shoulders ache. My back as well.” She glanced down at herself with a long-suffering sigh. “And I would very much like to own a sweater that does not threaten to burst at the seams.”

Dan coughed, turning red.

“But,” Kaylee added, a sly warmth slipping into her voice, “being young again has had its perks.”

Dan’s eyes flicked up to hers. “Perks?”

Kaylee’s blush remained, but so did her smile.

“Energy. Flexibility. A body that does not complain every time I stand up too quickly.” Her gaze softened, then turned just a little dangerous. “And the intimate attention of a handsome young man is not the worst thing a woman can experience.”

Dan’s entire face went hot.

He pulled back from her embrace at last, not violently, but quickly enough that Kaylee’s hands slid from his hair to his shoulders. When he looked up, he found her blushing too, which only made the situation worse. The mature woman’s expression was caught somewhere between embarrassment and amusement, as if she had surprised herself almost as much as she’d surprised him.

“Kaylee,” Dan said, his voice strained.

She chuckled, the sound low and pleased. “Being able to tease you is another perk.”

“That’s evil,” Dan muttered, rubbing at his face. “That is genuinely evil.”

“Consider it payback for the game,” Kaylee said as she stood from the wicker loveseat, smoothing her hands down the front of her sweater in a way Dan was certain she did not realize was unfairly distracting. “Making me beg for punishment and praise and all.”

“I didn’t make you say anything,” Dan argued weakly.

“Alas, that is true,” Kaylee replied, which was apparently the end of that discussion.

A soft scratching sound came from the sliding glass door. Dan looked over Kaylee’s shoulder and spotted Rusty through the glass, the golden retriever pawing at the door with big, betrayed eyes and the kind of tragic expression only a dog with a slightly late dinner could manage.

Kaylee turned and sighed fondly. “And that is my cue. Rusty is apparently wasting away to nothing despite having eaten enough treats from that blue-haired gremlin.”

As she moved toward the door, Dan watched her for a second, still thrown by the strange combination of comfort, teasing, and maternal authority she had brought with her. “Kaylee?”

She paused with one hand on the door handle. “Yes, Honey?”

“Were you always like this, too?” Dan asked.

Kaylee hummed, considering the question. Her smile was small, unreadable, and just a touch mischievous. “Perhaps.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No,” she said, sliding the door open as Rusty immediately tried to shove his snout through the gap. “But it is the one you are getting.”

Dan huffed, though there was less weight in it now.

Kaylee stepped inside, then glanced back at him over her shoulder. “For what it is worth, I intend to remain in my room tonight with headphones on. Loud ones.” Her eyes gleamed with deliberate implication. “Your evening with Maddy is your business, not mine.”

Dan’s blush returned in full force. “Right. Uh... thanks.”

Kaylee’s teasing expression softened.

“I mean it,” Dan added, his voice quieter. “Not just for that. For this. For listening.” He looked down at his hands, flexing them slowly as if testing whether they still carried the same tension as before. “I do feel better. I still don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do about the show. Or Sam. Especially Sam. But I can breathe a little easier now.”

Kaylee’s face warmed with quiet satisfaction. She looked happy, not smugly victorious, but genuinely glad that she had helped. Then, just as she was about to turn away, another thought seemed to catch her.

“Oh,” she said.

Dan looked back up. “Oh?”

Kaylee straightened slightly, one hand resting on Rusty’s head as the dog pressed against her leg. “Despite this newfound youth of mine, I should remind you that I am still a rather old-fashioned woman.”

Dan blinked, confused by the sudden declaration. “Okay?”

Her smile deepened, elegant and dangerous. “And as an old-fashioned woman, I expect to be courted like one.”

Dan’s brain stalled so hard he was briefly aware of nothing but the breeze, the skyline, and the sight of Kaylee Malone standing in the doorway with flushed cheeks and a smile that could ruin a man’s evening plans from twenty feet away.

“Are you teasing me again?” he asked carefully.

Kaylee did not answer. She only smiled, gave Rusty a gentle nudge back into the suite, and stepped inside after him.

The sliding glass door closed with a soft click, leaving Dan alone on the balcony with the deepening evening sky, a lighter heart, and one more complication he absolutely did not know what to do with.

After a long moment, he sank back against the wicker loveseat and brushed one hand through his hair with a sigh.

“Her teasing is seriously dangerous,” he mumbled.

---

AN: Howdy Howdy! Sorry for the wait again. Got caught up on another project and it caused me to push this one back until I finally updated it. Which now I have! I hope y'all enjoyed a bit of a slower chapter to wind down after the insanity of the last BP game. Dan really needed to compress and get his head on right. Hopefully this conversation with his Honey will kick him back into shape in now time. Next time though, we finally get Maddy's long awaited night. Will things go how she originally hoped, or will expectations be subverted like how Tori and Yui posed to her a couple of chapter ago. Only Dan knows the answer to that... and you will too next time!

I really wanted to get this chapter out to y'all today because it's a special one. My birthday! I hope y'all enjoy this gift and every other chapter coming along in the future. Thank you for sticking by me.

Thank y'all so much for reading, and as always, a special thank you to Benthom for reading over this chapter! I literally could not have done it without him. the Harem Hotel Community Discord as well as my Personal Community Discord for behind-the-scenes on this story and all my others!