Page 62 of The Dragon’s Good Girl

"I'm aware that was inappropriate."

"You looked up my home address?"

"Yes."

"And then came here?"

Another pause. "When you put it like that, it sounds so much worse."

Despite myself, something dangerously close to a laugh catches in my throat.

His eyes drop briefly to the flowers in his hands before returning to mine. "If you tell me to leave, I will. I won't come back, Margot. I only wanted one chance to speak to you somewhere that had nothing to do with a session or what you paid me to be."

I look at him standing beneath the hallway light, holding flowers he saved after they died.

For the first time since I met him, there's no room waiting behind him, no booking on a calendar, no rules telling either of us what happens next.

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.