My Taboo Harem!

Chapter 981: The Black Tiger

Truthfully, of all the machines Jade showed Phei after the Pagani, the one that ruined Phei most completely was not the next Pugatti, nor the savage Poenigsegg crouched two platforms away looking like it had been engineered by men who hated both fear and traffic laws. It was not the glassy silver monster from the collaborative line-up, nor the limited-edition road demon with the red carbon spine and the cockpit that looked ready to eject into war. No.

Of the next ten or so supercars she walked him past—each one more offensive to common budgets than the last—the one that finally stopped him dead in his tracks was the Pczinger 21C Sovereign.

The thing sat low and still beneath the lights in a way that made "car" feel like a poverty-stricken word for it.

It looked like a black tiger frozen at the exact instant before a pounce, every line drawn taut with restrained violence.

Its body was a deep predatory black, not flat black and not the dull matte nonsense lesser companies used when they wanted aggression on a budget, but a rich, devouring black that drank in the showroom light and returned it in cold gleams along its curves.

On either side of the body ran three vivid purple strips, sleek and luminous enough to look like controlled wounds cut into the beast’s frame, marks of elegance decorating something that had no need for decoration and yet tolerated it because beauty, like dominance, always wore itself best when it did not try too hard.

The nose sat narrow and merciless.

The rear end seemed ready to lunge even while stationary. Air channels folded into the machine so cleanly that it looked less built than grown, and the entire thing possessed the sort of predatory stillness that made a man instinctively lower his voice around it.

If certain cars were made to impress a room, this one had been made to embarrass the room for ever having thought it understood speed.

Phei stopped before it and did not blink.

Then he slowly exhaled, as though the beast had reached two invisible claws into his chest and politely informed him that resistance would be childish.

Jade noticed the effect immediately, and for the first time since they began the tour, her already graceful expression acquired the faintest trace of triumph. Not arrogance, because Jade Park was too elegant to wear arrogance openly. But satisfaction? Oh yes. Quiet, silken satisfaction. She looked almost pleased with herself for knowing exactly where to place the knife.

"This," she said softly, and the softness in her voice somehow made the machine more dangerous, "is the Pczinger 21C Sovereign."

Phei looked at her at last. "And why," he asked, voice low with suspicion and admiration in equal measure, "do I feel like you saved this one specifically to ruin my peace?"

Jade’s lips curved, just slightly. "Because I did."

Maddie, standing near him with her arms loosely folded, let out a delighted little laugh. "Oh, I like her more every minute."

Jade ignored that with dignified precision and turned her gaze back to the car. "The Sovereign was built from the philosophy of a fighter jet and then made obscenely suitable for the road. It was never meant to be merely fast. Fast is common up here." She gestured subtly around them, and she was right. On this floor, speed was table etiquette.

"This baby one was built to erase the distance between intention and motion."

Her hand hovered along the black curve of its canopy and then toward the rear bodywork as she continued, and Phei found himself paying equally dangerous attention to both her words and the way she delivered them.

Jade did not explain cars like a saleswoman or sound like a merchant pushing inventory. She sounded like a priestess introducing relics.

Her knowledge came smooth and unhurried, precise without becoming dull, affectionate without becoming sentimental. Each detail landed beautifully in his mind because she understood exactly how to make engineering sound seductive.

"The powertrain response is almost immediate," she said. "Acceleration from zero is violent enough to embarrass many track-only machines, and the top-end tuning was adjusted beyond the standard Sovereign profile. High-speed stability remains intact even where most cars begin negotiating with God. The downforce adapts in layers rather than bluntly, so it remains planted without making the driver feel smothered. Its steering is surgical. The weight distribution is nearly sinful. The braking response was rebuilt to survive panic a lesser machine would not."

Noor, who had long ago stopped pretending this was an evening for ordinary emotional reactions, stared openly. "How fast?"

Jade’s gaze flicked toward her, then back to Phei, because she knew very well which predator in the room actually cared about the answer in the most spiritually concerning way.

"Fast enough," she said, "that if a man does not respect it, the car will reveal how temporary confidence can be."

Phei smiled.

Maddie smiled too.

They were exactly the wrong audience for cautionary phrasing.

Jade continued, now a little more quietly, as though sharing a secret with him rather than speaking to the group.

"Its safety architecture is advanced. If speed exceeds driver recovery thresholds, the car has several corrective systems. Stability reclaim. Steering intervention. Predictive braking logic. Emergency traction compensation. If control begins to slip beyond safe margins, it will protect the driver even against the driver’s own poor decisions."

At that, Phei turned his head toward Maddie.

Maddie was already looking at him.

Then both of them grinned.

Jade saw it happen.

And to her credit, she did not immediately start regretting her life choices.

"Is there," Phei asked, with the false calm of a beautiful criminal about to request something entirely unreasonable, "a way to remove those safety measures?"

Jade held his gaze for one suspended second.

Then she grinned too, and that expression on her face was somehow even more devastating than elegance. It was smaller than Maddie’s wickedness, subtler than Sierra’s mischief, but no less dangerous. It said she understood exactly what sort of dragon stood before her and approved of the problem.

"Here I was," Jade murmured, "thinking you would never ask."