My Taboo Harem!-Chapter 357: Eleanor’s Arrival: First Time on Phei

The terminal felt wrong the moment Eleanor stepped through the private gates into the main concourse.

Not noisy or crowded. Just... silent. The sort of silence that presses against your eardrums like a warning.

Her jet-lagged brain took a sluggish three seconds to clock it.

Everyone had stopped moving.

Staff frozen mid-stride with trays balanced like bad performance art. Security guards ignoring their posts, hands hovering near holsters as if guns might suddenly become relevant to whatever this was. Passengers abandoning luggage carts mid-roll.

Hundreds of people—every single one she could see—staring upward at the massive screens mounted throughout the terminal like they’d just witnessed the second coming.

And the screens were showing... a basketball court?

Basketball, Eleanor frowned, brows knitting. Bloody Americans and their basketball.

Behind her, the blonde staff member from the tarmac—the one with the tablet and the clipped efficiency—had paused too. Her eyes flicked toward the nearest screen; the professional mask slipped for half a heartbeat, replaced by something softer, hungrier, almost embarrassingly human.

What on earth? Eleanor stopped walking. Turned properly.

It was some kind of sporting event. A stadium packed wall-to-wall. The crowd roar bled through the terminal speakers—cheering, chanting, the dull thunder of thousands of voices fused in collective hysteria.

The camera panned across banners, flashing lights, a sea of school colours.

She was about to dismiss it entirely and keep walking—focus on the misery waiting at the end of this car ride instead of whatever local sports drama had captured Paradise’s tiny attention span—when the airport itself screamed.

Not the screen.

The airport.

Women. Dozens. Hundreds. Staff, passengers, female security guards—all of them suddenly shrieking like teenagers at a boy-band reunion tour that nobody saw coming.

Eleanor actually flinched.

What the— She looked back at the screen.

Three figures had walked onto the court. The camera zoomed in, tracking them, and the crowd on screen went feral. But it was the women around her—the real ones, flesh and blood in this very terminal—that made Eleanor’s skin prickle with second-hand electricity.

"Oh my GOD—"

"He’s so—look at him, look—"

"I can’t, I literally can’t, I’m going to die—"

"Is he a god or what—is that...? Holy shit, he looks so—"

"YES, TAKE IT OFF!"

That last one came from somewhere to Eleanor’s left. A woman in a crisp business suit. Forty-something. Professional. Currently gripping her carry-on like it was the only thing keeping her from spontaneously combusting.

Eleanor stared at her.

Then looked back at the screen.

The three figures had reached centre court. Two of them she barely registered—one white, one black, both handsome enough in that generic athlete way. But the one in the middle...

Oh.

He was—

Eleanor didn’t have words for it. Beautiful wasn’t right. Beautiful was for paintings and sunsets and things polite enough to stay still. This was something predatory, something that moved and breathed and looked straight into the camera like he knew exactly what he was doing to every woman watching—and was quietly thrilled about it.

Hair, tousled just enough to look like he’d rolled out of someone’s bed five minutes ago. Purple eyes—purple, for fuck’s sake, that couldn’t be real, had to be contacts or Paradise’s special brand of genetic fuckery.

A face that belonged to some demigod or the kind of fever dreams you woke up from feeling faintly ashamed and very damp.

And young. Seventeen, possibly.

Just a boy, she told herself firmly.

The women around her kept going, a constant stream of overlapping, breathless chaos:

"My husband can never know I watched this—"

"Girl, my husband is watching it with me—"

"I would let that boy ruin my entire life. I would thank him afterward."

"Same. Same. Literally same."

"When he walked in, I swear to God, I forgot how to breathe—"

"The audacity. The absolute audacity of looking like that and also being—"

"Rich. Don’t forget rich."

"Being rich and hot should be illegal."

"It is illegal. He’s the crime and I’m pressing charges—with my thighs."

"The only thing you’re pressing in your thighs together, is your wet cunt, Suzy, be honest—"

"SANDRA!"

Eleanor blinked.

What is happening right now?

On screen, the boy in the middle was doing something—talking to someone with a mic. The camera cut tight to his face and a fresh wave of screaming erupted through the terminal—and the stadium—and probably across the whole bloody island.

Then the two boys beside him stepped forward.

Reached for his shirt.

And lifted.

The sound that came out of the terminal was not human.

Eleanor would swear to that later. Whatever noise those women made—that primal, collective, slightly unhinged wail—it wasn’t something vocal cords should produce. It was hunger and shock and something almost religious, like they were witnessing both a miracle and the end of civilisation at the same time.

On screen: abs.

That was it. Just—a torso. A stomach. The kind of body that looked photoshopped but clearly wasn’t, all carved lines and golden skin and—

"I need to sit down."

"I need a cigarette."

"I need him."

"Ma’am, this is an airport—"

"I KNOW where I am, Brenda."

Eleanor realised her mouth was slightly open.

Closed it.

Get a grip. He’s just a boy. You’ve seen attractive men before. This is—this is nothing. This is—

The camera zoomed out. The boy was smiling now. That lazy, knowing smile. Like he could hear every woman in Paradise losing her mind and was enjoying every second of the meltdown.

Arrogant, Eleanor thought.

Dangerously arrogant.

She wasn’t sure if she meant him or herself.

"Ms. WitchBourne?"

The blonde woman had appeared at her elbow. Still professional. But there was a flush on her cheeks that hadn’t been there before, and her voice had the tiniest tremor.

"Sorry for the... distraction." She cleared her throat. "That’s Phei Maxton. He’s somewhat of a... sensation at the moment."

"I gathered," Eleanor said dryly, her British accent clipped and precise as a scalpel. "One does wonder if the entire female population of Paradise has collectively lost the plot."

The woman gave a nervous laugh. "All the girls are talking about him. Main Paradise and Downtown both. It’s—" She stopped herself. Remembered who she was talking to, probably. "It’s a local matter. Nothing that should concern you during your stay."

Eleanor looked back at the screen.

The game seemed to be starting. Or about to start. Phei was still standing at centre court with that insufferable confidence, facing down what looked like an entire basketball team.

"What’s happening? The game?"

"Oh." The woman perked up slightly. Safer territory, apparently. "He challenged the school’s basketball team. The whole team. By himself. Well—" She gestured at the screen where the two other boys were visible. "Almost by himself. It’s been all anyone can talk about since yesterday. The politics, the family implications, the—"

Eleanor stopped listening.

Nodded in the right places. Made appropriate sounds. Let the words wash over her without absorbing any of them.

Paradise politics.

Some godly boy challenging a whole team.

Nothing to do with her.

She had her own issues. Her own nightmares. Her own impossible situation waiting at the end of this car ride.

Some pretty athlete with an ego the size of the island and eyes that could probably undress a goddess wasn’t going to solve any of that.

"—and of course the implications for the Heavenchild family alone—"

"I’m sure it’s all terribly exciting," Eleanor cut in, voice cool and clipped. "The car?"

The woman blinked. Recovered.

"Of course. Right this way, Ms. WitchBourne."

Eleanor followed her toward the exit.

Didn’t look back at the screens.

Didn’t think about purple eyes or arrogant smiles or the way her pulse had jumped when she’d seen him shirtless.

Just a boy.

Just Paradise being its ridiculous, oversexed, melodramatic self.

Nothing to do with her.

She had two days to prepare for the worst apology of her life.

She didn’t have time for distractions.