Dark Lord Seduction System: Taming Wives, Daughters, Aunts, and CEOs

Chapter 982: In a Stranger’s Ears

Genevieve’s eyebrows lifted, but she didn’t speak. Just waited.

"I know how that sounds," Maya rushed on.

"You have no idea what I’m thinking right now," Genevieve said gently. "And none of it is judgment."

She pulled her legs up onto the couch, turned to face Maya completely. Not as a polite guest anymore.

But a woman who recognized the exact shape of a confession right before it hits the floor.

"Go on."

Maya took a breath. The moan that rolled through the wall this time was long, broken, Isabella’s voice splintering on Peter’s name like she was praying and cursing at the same time. Maya closed her eyes for half a second. When they opened again, the green in them had gone darker. Deeper.

"He’s my stepdad," she said, so quiet it almost disappeared. "Technically. That’s what he is. And I’ve been living in this... orbit of him for months. Hearing it. Watching my mom change—physically, emotionally, everything. She’s happier than I’ve ever seen her. More alive. More... herself. And I watch that happen every single day, and I—"

She stopped. Bit her lip so hard it went white. Her hands were locked together in her lap, knuckles bloodless.

"You have fantasies," Genevieve said. Not accusing. Not even surprised. Just naming the thing that was already sitting naked between them.

Maya’s head snapped up.

"It’s written all over your face, honey," Genevieve said, soft, not unkind. The way you talk to someone who’s finally stopped pretending the house isn’t on fire. "It was written all over your face in the hallway when you grabbed his shirt like it owed you money."

Maya went nuclear. Scarlet from collarbones to hairline. Her chest rose and fell faster, like her lungs had just remembered they were allowed to want air.

"I—"

"You don’t have to explain it to me," Genevieve cut in. "I spent years married to a man who made me feel like breathing too loud was an inconvenience. Then I met Eros for—what, two hours?—and one brush of his fingers while I handed him a glass of wine made me feel like the center of the goddamn universe. If I’d been living in the same house as that? Hearing it every night and morning? Watching my mother finally look like a woman instead of a ghost? Honey, I’d have a whole library of fantasies. I’d need a card catalog."

"Cum—inside me—fill this mother pussy—now—"

Isabella’s voice ripped through the wall like she was personally daring the neighbors to call the police.

Maya buried her face in her hands.

Genevieve reached over, gentle, and tugged one of Maya’s wrists down until their eyes met again.

"Hey," she said. "No one can blame you."

Maya looked at her—eyes glassy, walls trembling. The same walls she’d built at twelve, the ones that had kept everyone out until Cazzie showed up with blue hair and zero impulse control and a lollipop permanently glued to her tongue.

Those walls were cracking now, loud enough to hear.

"No one can blame you," Genevieve repeated. "Not for the fantasies. Not for the wanting. Not for any of it. You’re not broken. You’re not wrong. You’re just a girl stuck in an impossible situation with an impossible man, and your body figured out the truth before your brain got the memo."

Maya let out a breath that sounded like it had been trapped since the divorce papers were signed. Shaky. Wet. She pulled her glasses off, pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes until stars burst behind her lids, then slid the frames back on.

The lenses stayed fogged.

She didn’t bother wiping them.

"He kissed me once," she whispered. "My first kiss. Before all of this. Before Mom. Before... everything. And I’ve never—nothing has ever—"

"Come close?"

"Nothing has even been in the same zip code."

Genevieve nodded once. Slow. She understood. She’d known Peter for less than twenty-four hours and already every kiss that came before him felt like practice. Like someone trying to draw fire with a crayon.

Like the universe had been rehearsing for him and nobody told her until last night.

Maya had pieced the rest together in the quiet hours when the apartment finally slept. She’d seen Emma, Sarah, Madison, and Ashley out with Peter—had watched the way they orbited him like moons around a planet that didn’t obey normal gravity.

She knew the Peter from those nights was Madison’s fiancé.

Then she’d seen Madison kiss Eros.

Same jawline. Same dangerous ease.

Same eyes that seemed to see straight through skin to whatever stupid, secret thing you were trying to hide.

The new Peter looked too much like Eros too or more accurately, Eros was the divine version of Peter and the latter was only a few levels from reaching that level.

And her mother—right there in the next room, voice breaking on his name through these stupidly thin walls that shouldn’t be—always called him Peter.

Never Eros. Always Peter.

That was the jagged little key that finally turned in the lock.

Her first love. Her first kiss. The boy she’d never quite scraped off the bottom of her heart. Was the same man currently making her mother sob his name into a pillow like it was the only word she remembered.

Her stepdaddy.

She’d carried the knowledge alone for weeks.

A cold, heavy stone lodged under her ribs. She hadn’t told Cazzie—not even in the middle of the night when everything else came spilling out over cheap ramen and worse decisions. Hadn’t told anyone.

Just let it press harder every time the headboard started up again.

Until now.

"For what it’s worth," Genevieve said, voice low and careful, "I think he knows."

Maya went still. "Knows what?"

"Everything." Genevieve didn’t flinch. "How you feel. What you want. He’s not the kind of man who misses a thing like that. Not even when he’s pretending not to notice."

The bedroom went quiet.

Both women turned toward the wall at the same second. The sudden silence felt obscene—louder than all the noise that had come before it. A held breath. A pause so thick it could’ve been anticipation or aftermath or both.

Then: one long, liquid moan. The mattress creaked once, slow and final, like a sigh settling into bones. Silence again.

It was done. For now.

Maya let the air out of her lungs in a rush. Her shoulders dropped like someone had finally cut the strings.

"He knows," she said. Not asking anymore. Just naming it.

"And when he decides you’re ready—if he’s waiting for you to stop looking like a deer in headlights every time he walks into a room," Genevieve went on, leaning back into the cushions with the lazy confidence of someone who’d already surrendered to the size of Eros’s hunger, "he’ll come for you too. And after listening to that—" She jerked her chin toward the bedroom wall. "—I’m pretty sure you won’t exactly need a sales pitch."

Maya looked at her.

Then—slow, helpless, like something inside her chest had finally rusted through—she laughed.

Real. Loud. The kind of laugh that starts in your stomach and ends up hurting your ribs because it’s been locked up so long it forgot how to behave.

The same laugh Cazzie had dragged out of her once, both of them sprawled on this carpet fighting over a controller until they were breathless and stupid.

"I hate that you’re right," Maya managed between gasps.

"I’ve been right about exactly one thing in my entire pampered, delusional life," Genevieve said, grinning now, "and it was walking into that men’s bathroom last night like I had any business being there."

Maya laughed harder—head thrown back, glasses slipping down her nose, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes from the sheer ridiculous relief of it. Genevieve laughed with her. The sound rolled through the living room, warm and messy and alive, drowning out the ghost of every moan that had come before.

Ten minutes later Isabella came out.

Hair a wreck. Skirt still twisted and riding too high on one thigh. Legs moving like they’d forgotten they were supposed to coordinate.

She stopped in the doorway, took in the sight of the two women on the couch—shoulders touching now, heads close, sharing the last sad grapes like they were passing contraband—and blinked.

"What did I miss?" she asked.

"Bonding," Genevieve said without missing a beat.

"Trauma bonding," Maya added, wiping her eyes.

Isabella studied them both for a long moment. Then she crossed the room, dropped onto the couch between them, reached over and stole the very last grape from the bowl.

"Good," she said around it. "You’ll need each other."

She leaned back, one arm slung casually behind Maya, the other brushing Genevieve’s shoulder.