Chapter Twelve
Soren
Margot looks at me for so long that I begin to think I've made a catastrophic mistake.
Not coming here. I'm already fairly certain that qualifies. Looking up a client's home address and appearing at her door uninvited is the sort of decision Gael could turn into a three-hour lecture and several new clauses in our contracts.
No, the mistake was thinking I could stand here, tell Margot I'll leave if she asks me to, and then calmly wait while she decides whether to do exactly that.
My dragon has no interest in being calm.
He's been restless since we left the mansion, and now that she's standing less than three feet away, every instinct I possess is straining toward her.
Her scent reaches me from inside the apartment and the reaction is immediate: heat gathers beneath my skin, my scales threatening along my arms, the dragon pushing forward with the same certainty he's had around her from the beginning.
And suddenly, finally, I understand why.
Mate.
The word lands with enough force that for a moment I forget where I am.
Six hundred years. Hundreds of lovers, countless clients, more people passing through my life than I could name, and not once has the dragon reacted to anyone the way he reacts to Margot.
The purr. The hoard. The instinct to keep everything she leaves behind, to feed her, make room for her, keep her close.
Even the things I dismissed as biology make sense now.
I’ve spent weeks treating every impossible reaction to her as something separate when they’ve all been telling me the same thing.
Mate.
She's my mate.
Of course she fucking is.
My dragon settles at the realization, unbearably pleased with himself, as though he's known all along and has merely been waiting for the supposedly intelligent half of us to catch up.
Margot is still watching me, unaware that the entire shape of my existence has just rearranged itself on her doorstep.
I tighten my hands around the frame of pressed peonies and force myself to stay exactly where I am.
Mate or not, she still gets to choose me.
If she closes the door, I'll leave.
I meant that.
I'll hate every fucking second of it, but I'll leave.
Margot glances down at the flowers again, then steps aside and opens the door wider.
"Come in."
Relief hits hard enough that I nearly embarrass myself with smoke.
I follow her inside before my dragon can mistake an invitation into her apartment for anything more significant than it is.
Her home is smaller than I expected, warm and lived-in in a way the mansion never manages despite the number of people occupying it. There's a book open on the couch, a mug on the coffee table and a pair of shoes kicked beneath a chair.
She takes the peonies when I offer them to her, studying the flattened pink petals beneath the glass.
"You kept them."
"Of course."
"And pressed them."
"Yes."
Her eyes lift to mine. "That's very romantic for someone who broke into my confidential client file."
"I didn't break into it. I have authorized access."
"That is not helping your case."
"I realized that as I said it."
Her mouth twitches, and the sight of it loosens something in my chest.
Margot gestures toward the couch. "Sit down. Watching you stand in my living room is making me concerned about the structural integrity of the building."
"I'm not that large."
She looks pointedly up at me.
I reconsider. "The couch, then."
I sit.
The couch immediately becomes a problem.
It is perfectly respectable furniture for a human woman of Margot's size. For me, it leaves my knees much higher than I would prefer and makes six centuries of dignity difficult to maintain.
Margot looks at me, presses her lips together and fails to hide the beginning of a laugh.
"Not one word."
"I wasn't going to say anything."
"You were absolutely going to say something."
"I was just going to ask whether you're comfortable."
"Liar."
The laugh that escapes her is quiet, but it's the first one I've heard from her since she walked out of my room.
I'd forgotten how much I missed it.
She sits at the other end of the couch with the peonies resting across her lap. The distance between us is deliberate, so I leave it there. I came to talk, not to coax her closer simply because I'm accustomed to being able to.
"I want to tell you what I was trying to tell you before you left," I say. "You said red, so the conversation ended there. I'm not trying to undo that. I just want the chance to finish it now, if you'll let me."
Margot is quiet for a moment, then nods. "Okay."
"The woman in the parking lot was Monica.
She was a regular client, and one of the last appointments I'd already committed to before I started stepping back from sessions.
What you saw was exactly what you thought you saw in one respect: she left relaxed and cared for because that was what she came to me for.
But she didn't leave with what you have, Margot. "
Her fingers tighten slightly around the frame. "You said you're stepping back, what does that mean?"
"I stopped taking new clients and began transferring the existing ones before you came to see me the other night.
I should have told you immediately, but I'd spent several days making certain the transitions were handled properly before I said anything to you.
They trusted me, and I wasn't willing to simply abandon them because my circumstances had changed. "
"And your circumstances were me."
"Yes."
I shift on the couch, stretching one leg out so I'm no longer folded into quite such an undignified shape.
"You were right about something else that night.
There are parts of what I gave you that began as my job.
The heat, the praise, the aftercare, the space itself—I'm not going to rewrite our history and pretend none of that was professional simply because my feelings changed.
I understand why seeing Monica made you question all of it. "
Margot looks down at the flowers. "I thought I'd been an idiot. I thought I'd taken things you probably did every week and made them special because I wanted them to be."
"You weren't an idiot. The peonies were because I remembered your grandmother.
I cooked because I wanted to feed you something I'd made myself.
I walked you to your car because every instinct I had was demanding I stop you from leaving.
" I pause, watching her thumb move along the edge of the frame.
"And Angel has never belonged to anyone else. "
Her eyes lift to mine.
"I meant everything I told you that night. What I didn't manage to tell you was how far it had already gone. By the time you saw Monica, I'd cleared most of my calendar, and I'd already started making space for you in my rooms."
Her brow furrows. "Making space for me?"
"I cleared a drawer for you."
Margot stares at me. "You cleared a drawer for me after three sessions?"
"When you say it like that, it does sound slightly unhinged."
There are moments when six hundred years of life offer no useful preparation whatsoever.
"It is unhinged."
"I'm a dragon, Angel. We have unfortunate instincts regarding possessions and domestic arrangements."
A laugh escapes her before she catches it, and I feel my dragon stir at the sound.
"There was also your hair tie," I admit.
"My hair tie?"
"The one you left behind after your first session. It's beside my lamp."
Her expression shifts from confusion to disbelief. "You kept my hair tie?"
"Yes, and before you ask, I'm aware that this is not improving my case."
"Soren."
"And the robe."
She closes her eyes briefly. "What robe?"
"The one you wore after our second session. I removed it from the laundry before it could be washed."
Her eyes open. "You stole a robe because it smelled like me?"
"I would strongly prefer a different phrasing."
Margot presses her lips together, but I can see the smile she's trying not to give me. It disappears when she looks down at the flowers again, and when she speaks, her voice is quieter. "And these?"
"I pressed them when they began to wilt. After you left, I nearly threw them away."
That gets her attention.
I don't particularly want to tell her the rest. Which is precisely why I came here.
"After you left the other day, I went back to my rooms and started undoing everything. I moved the robe, took the flowers down and closed the drawer I'd cleared for you. By the next morning I was prepared to reopen my entire roster and go back to exactly the life I had before you walked into it."
Margot watches me carefully. "Why?"
"Because for a while, it was easier to believe my clan had been right about me than to admit how badly it hurt to lose you. You walked out of my room, and within a day I was ready to prove them right—pack it all away, reopen the roster, go back to the safest version of myself I know."
Margot is quiet for a moment before she reaches across the space between us and takes my hand. Her fingers are cool against mine, and the simple contact pulls more heat into my palm.
"They were wrong about you," she says. "Wanting to care for someone doesn't make you weak."
My fingers close carefully around hers. "No. And wanting someone to care for you doesn't make you weak either."
She goes very still, and for a moment I wonder if I've pushed too far, but she doesn't take her hand away.
"I worked something out too," she says.
I wait.
“I panicked because I believed you,” she says. “If you’d been lying, I could’ve been angry and walked away. But you weren’t. You meant it, and suddenly I had no idea what to do.”
She looks at me. “That scared me more than being wrong.”
There are a dozen things I want to say, most of them involving the many ways she has already become necessary to me, but that would miss the point so spectacularly that even my dragon understands enough to remain quiet.