Chapter Eight #3
The urge is immediate and primitive enough that my claws threaten beneath my fingertips and my wings twitch beneath the skin of my back, pressing to be let out. She is leaving, getting farther away with every second, and my dragon sees absolutely no reason why I should allow that to happen.
But I stay where I am.
Margot came here by choice.
She leaves by choice too.
My dragon needs to learn the difference.
When I finally turn back toward the house, Gael is waiting just inside the front door.
Her gaze moves past me toward the drive. "You walked her to her car."
"Yes."
"You don't do that."
"Apparently I do now."
Gael looks at me for a long moment before turning toward the hallway. "My office."
"I've already had this conversation with you."
"No. You've avoided this conversation with me twice. You're going to have it now."
I follow her because arguing will only make it take longer.
She closes the office door behind us but doesn't sit.
"This stopped being simple for you some time ago," she says. "I need to know whether you understand that."
The humor disappears.
I think about the scales Margot touched without fear, the dinner waiting upstairs, and the word that came out of me while I was inside her.
Mine.
"I understand."
Gael watches me for a moment. "I don't think you do.
You've spent centuries doing this work without confusing what happens in a session with what belongs outside it.
Now you're changing your schedule, cooking for her, buying her flowers and following her into the parking lot because some part of you can't stand to watch her leave. "
Smoke slips from my nose. "Fucking wonderful."
"I'm not judging you, Soren."
"That would be a refreshing change."
"I'm serious." Her expression softens, though only slightly. "I'm not asking you to stop feeling whatever it is you're feeling. I'm asking whether you've admitted to yourself that you are feeling it."
That shuts me up.
For years, I've known how to keep my own wants out of this. What I felt never mattered because the sessions weren't about me.
Until Margot.
"I think about her when she isn't here," I say eventually. "I rearrange my week around seeing her without meaning to. Tonight I called her mine, and when she drove away, every instinct I had was telling me to follow her." I drag a hand over my face. "So yes, Gael. I've noticed."
Her expression doesn't change, but some of the tension leaves her shoulders.
"She's your client."
"I'm painfully aware of that."
"Good, because that's the part that matters right now.
You can feel whatever you like, but you don't get to assume she feels it too, and you don't get to use the dynamic between you to find out.
If this becomes something else, she needs room to choose it without wondering whether her Dom expects it from her. "
That lands harder than the rest.
Not because I disagree.
Because I don't.
Margot came to me because she wanted to give up control for a few hours. The fact that she trusts me with it does not make anything else mine to take.
"I would never do that to her."
"I know." Gael's voice is quieter now. "That's why I'm talking to you instead of removing you from her bookings."
I look at her sharply.
"Yes," she says. "I considered it."
My dragon reacts badly enough that the room heats around us, bronze scales racing over my forearms and climbing the side of my neck before I can force them back.
Gael raises an eyebrow. "And that reaction is precisely why we're having this conversation."
I close my eyes briefly. "Point made."
"Figure out what you want, Soren. Then decide what you can actually offer her before you let this go any further."
There isn't much I can say to that.
I reach for the door, but Gael speaks again before I can open it.
"And Soren?"
I glance back.
"If you hurt her, I'll end you."
Despite everything, my mouth twitches. "Professionally?"
Gael gives me a long, level look.
"No."
I believe her.
By the time I reach my rooms, the house has gone quiet.
Margot's hair tie is still beside the lamp. The robe I took from the laundry last week remains folded nearby, and tonight, for the first time, neither of them feels like the strangest thing in the room.
The nest does.
I stand at the edge of it, looking at the space I made for her weeks ago without admitting what I was doing. The blankets are still arranged the way I thought she'd like them.
For centuries, this room has been the one place that belonged entirely to me.
Now I keep imagining her in it.
Not for a session.
Not because she booked an hour or because I'm responsible for giving her something she needs.
Just Margot, curled beneath my blankets with one of her ridiculous full-price hardbacks, complaining that I keep the room too warm while making absolutely no effort to leave.
The image settles into place far too easily.
I lie down, but my dragon remains restless beneath my skin, still turned toward the gates as though she might come back through them if we wait long enough.
For the first time in six hundred years, I look around my hoard and understand exactly what's missing.
Her.