Page 14 of The Dragon’s Good Girl

I lock the car and turn toward the house.

It looks nothing like I expected. I'd prepared myself for something obvious on the drive over. A converted warehouse, maybe, or an old nightclub with blacked-out windows and enough red lighting to make me reconsider every decision I'd made since college. Instead, the gravel drive curves beneath enormous old trees toward a sprawling stone house with ivy climbing one wall and warm light glowing through the downstairs windows. Even the front door is beautiful, painted a deep burgundy with greenery arranged around it.

It looks like someone's home.

For some reason, that makes me even more nervous.

A sketchy dungeon would have been easy. One look, one absolutely fucking not, and I could have gone home with a clear conscience. This place gives me nothing obvious to object to, which means I keep walking.

The front door opens before I reach it.

I'm still a few steps away, trying to decide whether I'm supposed to knock or ring the bell, when a woman appears in the doorway. Her charcoal suit fits perfectly, her dark hair is immaculate, and the pointed tips of her ears show clearly beneath it.

"Margot." She glances at the tablet. "Seven minutes early. I appreciate punctuality."

I recognize her voice immediately.

Gael.

She was intimidating enough over the phone. In person, there's something about her that makes me straighten without meaning to. Her eyes seem to shift color when she moves, catching shades I've never seen before. Even stranger, the air around her feels noticeably cooler than the afternoon at my back.

Fae, I remember from the website.

Right.

Because the dragon isn't going to be the only supernatural creature I meet today.

"Come in," she says, stepping aside. "It's okay to be nervous. Most people are the first time."

That is considerably more reassuring than being told not to be nervous, so I follow her inside.

The entry hall is all dark wood, old floors, and warm lamplight. Gael leads me farther inside, then stops beside a narrow table near the stairs and pulls up the contract on her tablet.

"We'll do the contract first. You read the information I sent you?"

"Twice."

"Good." There's something in her expression that suggests she learned more about me during that screening call than I realized. "The important part is simple. The contract is bound by my magic. Once you state a limit, no one in this house can cross it. If you use a safeword, whatever is happening stops. Immediately. There are no exceptions because someone misunderstood you, got carried away, or thought you didn't really mean it."

I look down at the contract on the screen. I've signed enough of them in my life—my lease, employment paperwork, an NDA Richard insisted was urgent and then forgot existed—but none of those came with supernatural enforcement.

"And if something comes up that I didn't put down as a limit?"

"Then Soren discusses it with you before anything happens. If you don't agree, it doesn't happen." Gael offers me the tablet and stylus. "Nothing about signing this removes your ability to say no later."

That helps more than I expect it to.

I sign.

A faint warmth spreads beneath my fingertips as I finish my name. I pull my hand back and stare at the screen.

"That was the magic?"

"Yes."

"Oh."

Gael takes the tablet from me as though contracts warming beneath people's hands are entirely ordinary. I suppose around here they are.