Page 47 of The Dragon’s Good Girl

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.