Chapter Nine #2
He isn't waiting in the doorway when I reach the room. He's farther inside, standing near the windows with his hands at his sides, and when he turns toward me, his eyes are already burning.
Not their usual warm gold, the one I've almost stopped noticing. Not a flash of dragon that disappears once he gets himself under control.
Molten. Lit from inside, pupils slitted to knife-cuts—his dragon sitting right at the surface.
"Margot."
The way he says my name nearly ruins the anger I spent the walk upstairs holding onto.
Nearly.
I close the door behind me but stay beside it. "Hi."
His gaze moves over my face, and whatever he sees there makes his brow furrow. "Is something wrong?"
The question almost makes me laugh. "I'm fine."
He clearly doesn't believe me, but he doesn't push. "Before we do anything tonight, there's something I need to tell you."
My stomach tightens. Of course there is. "Okay."
For once, Soren seems to have trouble finding the words. "I've been doing this work for a very long time, Margot. I know how to keep what I want separate from what a client needs from me, and until you, I've never had a problem doing it."
Some of the anger I carried upstairs falters, allowing something far more dangerous to slip through.
He takes a step toward me, then seems to think better of it and leaves the distance between us intact.
"The flowers last week weren't something I do for clients, and neither was dinner.
I remembered what you told me about your grandmother, saw the peonies and wanted you to have them.
I cooked because I wanted to cook again for you.
And when I walked you to your car, it was because every instinct I had was telling me not to let you leave, and walking beside you was the only part of that instinct I was willing to indulge. "
My throat tightens. These are the answers I wanted before I ever knew I was asking the questions, and hearing them now should make everything that happened in the parking lot disappear.
It doesn't.
"And Angel?" I ask.
His expression changes, and there it is again: the same flicker of surprise I caught the first time the name slipped out, except this time he doesn't try to hide it.
"No," he says quietly. "I don't call anyone else that."
I should feel relieved.
Yesterday, I would have given almost anything to hear him say all of this. Hours ago, sitting across from Tess, I was practically begging the universe for proof that I hadn't imagined whatever was happening between us.
Instead, all I can see is damp dark hair and a woman smiling as she walked away from him.
"What happens in this room with you stopped being entirely professional for me after our first session," Soren continues. "I should have told you sooner, and I won't touch you again until you know that and decide what you want to do with it."
I stare at him.
He thinks he's doing the right thing. He's standing there giving me every answer I wanted, telling me the flowers mattered and the dinners mattered and Angel belongs to me, and somehow that only makes everything I saw in the parking lot hurt more.
The anger comes so quickly I don't know what to do with it.
So I cross the room and kiss him.
There's nothing careful about it. I grab the front of his shirt and pull him down to me, kissing him with all the frustration I can't seem to put anywhere else. For a second, Soren doesn't respond, and I can almost feel him trying to work out what I'm doing.
Then his hands close around me.
The growl that rumbles through his chest goes straight through mine, and suddenly thinking is the last thing I want to do.
His hand slides into my hair while the other spreads across my back, heat pouring through my clothes as he pulls me closer.
I press against him and kiss him harder because this I understand.
I know what happens when he touches me. I know how easy it is to stop being Margot-who-thinks-too-much and become nothing but sensation for a while.
That's what I want.
I want to stop thinking about the woman in the gray coat. I want to stop wondering what Soren did with her before I arrived, whether she heard this same growl or felt these same hands. I want him to make all of it disappear.
His hands move beneath my sweater, and the first touch of his palm against my stomach pulls a gasp from me.
He's so warm that my body responds before my head can catch up, leaning into him as his hands slide higher.
A moment later he catches the hem and pulls the sweater over my head, tossing it somewhere behind us before his hands return to my bare skin.
By the time he lifts me, my legs are already wrapping around his waist, and I drag him closer, desperate for enough of him to drown everything else out.
Soren carries me to the bed and lowers me onto it with far more care than I'm showing him.
I pull him down after me, kissing him again before he can say anything, and for a few seconds it works.
There's only his weight, his heat, his mouth against my throat and the hand moving down my body.
Then he speaks.
"Beautiful," he murmurs, his voice dropping into that low, intimate register that usually makes everything inside me melt. "Fuck, you're so—"
"Don't."
My hands flatten against his chest.
Soren stops immediately.
"Don't do the voice."
He draws back enough to look at me, and the sudden distance between us leaves my body aching for what it was expecting. His hand moves away from my waist, but he doesn't leave the bed.
"What voice?"
"That one." My throat feels tight. "The voice you use when you're trying to make me feel like I'm the only woman in the world."
Something changes in his face.
"Margot."
I look away.
His hand starts toward me, then stops before he touches me. "Look at me."
I can't.