Chapter Nine
Margot
My next session with Soren is supposed to be Saturday.
By Tuesday afternoon, I've decided Saturday is too far away.
I spend an embarrassing amount of time with the booking page open behind my email, checking his availability between actual work as though the times might have changed since the last time I looked. There's an opening on Thursday evening.
There is absolutely no reason I need another session before Saturday.
I'm sleeping properly, eating actual meals, and getting better at saying no without spending the next six hours convinced I've committed some terrible social crime.
The Saturday appointment is already booked.
I could simply wait another few days like a normal person.
The problem is that I miss him.
Not what he does to me, although I'm certainly not going to pretend that part isn't a factor.
I miss Soren. I miss the way he listens when I talk, the rare laugh I can sometimes drag out of him, and the ridiculous little look he gets when his dragon does something he clearly wishes it hadn't.
I miss sitting against his chest and feeling him purr beneath my cheek. I miss hearing him call me Angel.
And, because I'm determined to make this as complicated as possible, I haven't stopped thinking about him saying mine.
He said it while he was still inside me, and I've replayed it often enough since that I should probably be embarrassed.
It hadn't sounded deliberate. If anything, Soren had seemed as caught off guard by the word as I was, and that's the part my brain keeps returning to whenever I try to convince myself it meant nothing.
The sensible explanation is that it did mean nothing.
He's a Dom. I'm his client. He is exceptionally good at making me feel safe, wanted and cared for because those are things I am literally paying him to provide.
Developing feelings for him because he does his job too well would be humiliating enough without deciding every pet name and possessive word is evidence that he's secretly developing feelings for me too.
None of which stops me from booking Thursday.
The confirmation lands in my inbox a few seconds later, and I stare at it with the uncomfortable awareness that I have just paid money because I couldn't wait an extra two days to see a man.
I tell Tess about it after work, mostly because keeping it to myself somehow feels worse.
"You booked an extra session because you missed him?" she asks.
We're sitting in the café near her office, and she has the decency to wait until after I've taken a drink before attacking me.
"I booked an extra session because I wanted one."
"Of course. Completely unrelated to missing him. Girl, what the fuck am I going to do with you."
"I regret telling you things."
"No, you don't. Who else would tell you when you're being insane?"
I give her a look over my coffee. "I'm not insane."
"No. You're sleeping eight hours a night, buying yourself things and having excellent sex with a dragon. Frankly, this is the most functional breakdown I've ever seen you have."
I laugh despite myself, which is annoying because it only encourages her.
Tess watches me for a moment before her expression changes. "You really like him, don't you?"
There's no teasing in it this time.
I look down at my coffee. "I think I'm falling for a man I pay by the hour."
"That is bleak even for you."
I glance up.
Tess leans back in her chair. "I'm not saying you should start picking out curtains together, Margot. I'm wondering whether you actually think everything happening between you is part of the service."
That's exactly the question I don't want her asking.
"I don't know." I run my thumb along the edge of the cup. "He called me Angel the second time I saw him, and the first time he said it, I swear he looked shocked. Just for a second, before he covered it. Then he kept calling me that anyway."
Tess's eyebrows lift, but she lets me continue.
"And last time he cooked me dinner. There were flowers because he remembered something I'd told him about my grandmother, and he walked me all the way to my car afterward.
Then there was…" I hesitate, because saying this part aloud makes it real in a way I'm not entirely prepared for. "He said mine."
"During the session?"
"Yes, while he was inside me. It just came out."
"And what do you think that means?"
"That I have no idea what it means." I sit back with a sigh.
"That's the problem. I can explain all of it if I want to.
He remembers things because he's attentive.
He takes care of me because that's what I booked him for.
Maybe the flowers and dinner are things he does for everyone, and Angel is just a pet name I've decided is special because I like hearing him say it. "
"But you don't think that."
I'm quiet for a moment. "I don't know what I think. I know what I want to think, and that makes me a terrible judge of whether any of it is actually real."
Tess reaches across the table and covers my hand with hers. "Then maybe stop trying to solve it before anything has actually happened."
"That sounds suspiciously healthy."
"I hate it too."
I smile, but the uncertainty stays with me.
By Thursday evening, I've managed to convince myself that booking the extra session wasn't completely unhinged. I wanted to see him, so I booked time to see him. There are worse decisions I could make, and at least this one comes with excellent aftercare.
I arrive twenty minutes early because emotional growth does not extend to my pathological need to be everywhere before everyone else.
I stay in the car rather than inflicting my punctuality on the rest of the house, checking my phone while I wait. I'm halfway through an email when the front door opens, and movement at the top of the steps catches my eye.
A woman comes out, and for a second I can see Soren standing behind her in the open doorway. He says something I can't hear, and she looks back at him with a smile before stepping outside. He stays there until she reaches the bottom of the steps, then closes the door.
She looks around forty, maybe a little older, dressed in a soft gray coat with dark hair still damp at the ends.
I wouldn't have thought anything of her if it weren't for the way she moves.
There's a looseness in her shoulders, an ease in her steps that I recognize immediately because I've felt it in my own body every time I've walked out of that house.
My attention drops to her damp hair.
Something unpleasant twists low in my stomach.
Of course Soren has other clients. I know that. I have always known that. The man has been doing this for centuries; I wasn't under the impression he spent all that time sitting upstairs waiting for me to discover the website.
Knowing it is very different from watching one of them leave.
The woman crosses the parking lot and gets into the car beside mine. She's close enough that I turn my face toward my phone before she can catch me staring, but a few seconds later I glance back.
She checks herself in the mirror and smiles.
Not at anyone. Just a small, private smile that makes my stomach sink because I know that one too.
I've worn it all the way home from here.
The last time, I could still feel Soren's purr against my cheek. I'd spent half the drive replaying things he'd said to me, smiling like an idiot whenever I remembered Angel.
I look at the woman beside me and wonder what she's replaying.
Maybe he ran her a bath. Maybe he washed her hair and wrapped her in a warm robe afterward.
Maybe he remembered some tiny thing she told him weeks ago and had it waiting when she arrived.
Maybe she has her own version of Angel, some word that sounds different in his voice and makes her wonder whether he means it more than he should.
I have no reason to believe any of that.
That doesn't stop my brain from supplying every detail.
Her car pulls away, and I watch it cross the gravel toward the gates.
All the little pieces I've been collecting as evidence suddenly look different.
The bath. The praise. The flowers. Dinner. The way he watches me. Even mine.
Soren is very, very good at his job. I knew that after the first session. I just hadn't considered what being good at his job must look like with everyone else.
Maybe this is it.
Maybe every woman leaves feeling special.
The thought hurts far more than it has any right to.
I sit there staring at the empty parking space beside me, feeling stupid for the extra booking, for the conversation with Tess, for every second I've spent wondering whether Soren calling me Angel means something when I have absolutely no idea what he calls anyone else.
I came here tonight because I missed him.
I put my hand on the gearstick. I could leave.
Reverse out of the space, drive home and have the breakdown somewhere private, where Tess can bring wine and sit beside me without saying I told you so.
She wouldn't, either. That's the worst part.
She'd take one look at my face, climb onto the sofa beside me and let me be miserable about the man I've paid to see a few times.
But leaving means I'll never know whether I was right.
I've spent too much of my life deciding what other people mean without making them say it. I'm not doing that again.
So I turn off the engine.
For a moment, I sit there looking down at myself.
Jeans, a plain sweater, barely any makeup.
I hadn't dressed for him tonight the way I did last time, and right now I'm grateful for it.
There's something humiliating about imagining myself standing in front of the mirror choosing another dress while Soren was upstairs doing for someone else all the things I'd started believing were ours.
Fine. Whatever.
If this is a service, then I can treat it like one.
I get out of the car and walk inside.
Something feels different before Soren says a word.