Page 3 of The Dragon’s Good Girl

"You're measuring."

Ronan takes another step back. "With my eyes."

Grath closes his own for a long moment. "For fuck's sake."

Ronan grins and backs up again.

I leave them to it. Whatever happens next, I want plausible deniability.

The Nest is quiet when I reach it. Not my nest upstairs, but the aftercare room we all use for clients who need somewhere soft to land after a session. No restraints, no equipment, nothing expected of anyone once they come through the door.

Amber light warms the walls, and wide heated beds line one side of the room beneath stacks of weighted blankets and pillows. There's water and juice in the small refrigerator, snacks in the cabinet, clean clothes for anyone who needs them, and a shower through the adjoining door. The sound machine murmurs softly from the corner, just loud enough to dull whatever noise carries through the rest of the house.

It's probably my favorite room downstairs.

I straighten a blanket someone folded badly, then check the cabinet.

Water is running low. Juice is fine. Hand towels need replacing.

The chocolate protein bars are gone, while the lemon ones remain untouched. As usual. I'm fairly certain Gael keeps buying them because our collective refusal to eat them has become a battle of wills she intends to win.

I add water, towels, and edible protein bars to the list in my head before continuing toward the common room.

The noise reaches me first.

The common room sits at the center of the ground floor, where the mansion stops pretending to be an imposing three-hundred-year-old estate and starts looking like eight men actually live here. The open kitchen takes up one end, a long, scarred dining table the other, with a collection of mismatched couches and armchairs clustered around the fireplace between them. The place looks intimidating enough from the drive, all dark stone, iron gates, and old trees. The illusion doesn't survive long once you get inside.

By the time I get there, Grath and Ronan have somehow beaten me. Apparently, whatever happened with the log resolved itself while I was in the Nest. Since neither of them is bleeding, I don't ask.

They've claimed the largest couch and, judging by Ronan's expression, resolved absolutely nothing. Grath takes up most of it on his own, seven feet of green-skinned orc compressing the cushions so badly that Ronan is wedged against the far armrest to keep from sliding into him as they continue arguing.

"I'm saying it improves the chase," Ronan insists.

"I'm saying you don't know what a barrier is."

"I know what a barrier is."

"You called it a vault."

"Because you vault over it."

"That makes your legs the vault."

Ronan stares at him. "That is the stupidest thing you've ever said."

Grath's eyebrows climb. "You want to make a list?"

Across the room, Corvin, our kraken, turns a page; one of his tentacles has drifted from his lap to rest against the sofa cushion, curling absently at the tip while he reads. He's been in the same spot since breakfast and has somehow managed to ignore Grath and Ronan completely, a skill I've spent several decades trying to master.

I'm deciding whether I have time to make lunch before my next appointment when Mikael sweeps in from the east hallway wearing a black silk robe and the deeply aggrieved expression he usually reserves for minor inconveniences.

He makes it halfway across the room before stopping beneath the thermostat. "Sixty-eight degrees. Soren, have you finally decided to kill me?"

I open the refrigerator and survey my options for lunch. "If I decided to kill you, Mikael, I'd come up with something more efficient than central heating."

"You say that as though hypothermia isn't a perfectly respectable cause of death." He pulls the robe tighter around himself and heads for the fireplace. "Some of us are cold-blooded."

"You're a vampire, not a lizard."