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Absolutely not.

“Tea?” she asks, lifting the mug.

“No, thank you.”

She gives me an amused look. “You know, you can relax. I’m not auditing you right now.”

I have never been less relaxed in my existence.

“Good night, Miss Lake.”

“Good night, Mr. Lowe.”

I leave before my dragon can propose marriage.

Eleven minutes later, I return to the kitchen.

Her mug is sitting in the sink.

White ceramic. Chipped slightly along the handle. An ordinary cup from an ordinary set purchased for the guest quarters.

It smells like her.

Ours.

It belongs in the dishwasher.

I pick it up.

Keep.

That is absurd. And yet, I carry it to my study. The mug joins the blue Bic pen in my desk drawer. I stand looking at them. A pen and a cup.

More than a century of collecting the finest treasures on earth, and my dragon is apparently building a hoard from the contents of a twenty-seven-year-old accountant’s handbag and the kitchen sink.

Good hoard.

I close the drawer and lock the study again. Walk upstairs. Pass her door. Stop.

I can hear her breathing. Slow and deep. She is asleep or nearly asleep. Her scent is pooling in the hallway, warm honey and soft ginger, and I stand outside her door like a man who has lost every ounce of dignity he has ever earned.

I breathe her in.

Stay, my dragon says.

I walk to my bedroom. Close the door. Sit on the edge of my bed in the dark. I have waited more than a century and a half for this. I will not ruin it by being impatient.

I will be measured. Deliberate. Controlled.

My dragon, who has already mentally rearranged the hoard to make room for her, does not dignify this with a response.

Chapter Three

nina

Breakfast is at seven. He specified this. So I am at the kitchen table at 6:58 because I am a person who arrives two minutes early to everything, including meals with employers whose eyes change color and who ask about my scent.

I slept badly. My skin was too sensitive, the sheets too smooth, my omega humming all night like a tuning fork someone struck and forgot about. I dreamed about leather and whiskey and gold eyes and woke up at four in the morning with my hand between my thighs and his name in my head, which is a development I am choosing not to examine.