His hand moved between my legs, and I watched my own face change in the mirror—watched my eyes widen, my lips part, my entire body tense and then melt into the touch.
He'd touched me before. In Session Two, I'd climaxed under his hands while blindfolded, the darkness allowing me to hide from the reality of my own arousal.
But now, watching myself respond—watching the pleasure register across my face, watching the way my body moved instinctively toward his touch—there was no hiding. No dissociation. No escape into analytical observation.
Just me, reflected three times over, completely present in my own skin.
"Tell me what you feel," Meric commanded, his fingers moving with devastating precision.
"I feel..." I gasped as his thumb found the exact pressure point that made rational thought dissolve. "I feel wanted. Seen. Powerful."
"Because?"
"Because I chose this." The realization hit as I said it aloud, the core insight that Sessions One and Two had been building toward. "I chose to kneel. I chose to be naked. I chose to watch myself surrender. That's where the power is—not in control, but in choosing to give it up."
"Yes." His approval washed over me like heat. "That's exactly right."
His hand withdrew, and I heard the sound of a drawer opening somewhere behind me—equipment storage, standard in all session chambers. A moment later, I felt him return, this time positioned directly behind me, his body close enough that I could feel the heat of him through his clothes.
"This is your last chance to use your safe word," Meric said quietly. "After this, we cross a boundary we haven't crossed before. Do you want to stop?"
"No." I quickly said.
"Look at yourself, Aethelreda. Look at your face and tell me what you want."
I forced myself to meet my own eyes in the mirror, to see the desperation and desire and aching vulnerability there without flinching.
"I want you inside me," I said. "I want to feel you. I want to watch myself break open and know that I chose it."
"Then watch," He said calmly.
And then he was there—the blunt pressure, the moment of resistance, the slow, inexorable push as he entered me from behind. I felt it everywhere: the stretch, the fullness, the psychological weight of this specific intimacy we'd been building toward for ten days.
But more than the physical sensation, I saw it.
Saw my face in the mirror as he filled me completely.
Saw the exact moment my careful control shattered.
Saw the woman who existed beneath the armor of clinical detachment and professional competence—raw, hungry, alive in ways I'd forbidden myself to be for thirty-two years.
"Don't look away," Meric commanded, his voice rough with something that wasn't entirely clinical. "Watch yourself. See what I see."
He began to move.
Slow at first—deliberate, controlled, each thrust measured and purposeful. His hands gripped my hips, holding me steady, positioning me exactly where he wanted. And I watched the whole thing unfold in the mirror: watched my body respond, watched pleasure transform my face, watched myself come completely undone.
"Tell me what you see," Meric demanded.
"I see—" My voice broke as he changed the angle, hitting some place deep inside that sent sparks behind my eyes. "I see someone who's powerful because she's vulnerable. Someone who's—oh god—someone who's choosing this."
"Keep going."
"I see a woman who spent her whole life afraid of needing anyone, and now she's—" Another thrust, harder this time, and I gasped. "—now she's falling apart, and it feels like freedom."
"Yes." His hand slid around to my front, fingers finding the exact point of pressure that made my vision blur. "This is what integration feels like, Aethelreda. Body and mind. Thought and sensation. The woman you are in here,"—he tapped my temple gently—" and the woman you are out there." He gestured to the mirrors.
I was drowning in sensation—his hand between my legs, his body moving inside mine, the relentless visual assault of watching myself experience pleasure I'd never allowed myself to fully feel before.
"I can't—" I started, but he cut me off.
"Yes, you can. You can endure this. You can watch yourself be fully present in your body. That's the whole point."
The pressure built—not just physical arousal but psychological intensity, the way cognitive dissonance and somatic experience were finally, brutally colliding. I was being forced to witness my own transformation, and there was nowhere to hide from the reality of what I'd become under Meric's hands.
A woman who begged.
A woman who needed.
A woman who surrendered with her eyes wide open.
"Please," I heard myself gasp. "Please, I need—"
"What do you need?" Meric's voice was controlled but strained, as if maintaining clinical distance required every ounce of his willpower.
"Permission. I need permission to come."
"Not yet," He replied.
The denial was exquisite torture. My entire body was wound tight, trembling on the edge of climax, and he was holding me there deliberately—keeping me suspended in the moment of maximum vulnerability.
"Look at yourself," he commanded. "Look at how beautiful you are right now. Completely open. Completely mine."
Mine?
The possessive word shouldn't have affected me the way it did—this was clinical work, therapeutic intervention, structured Praxis designed to shatter my maladaptive control patterns.
But in that moment, watching myself in the mirror with Meric inside me and his hand controlling my pleasure with surgical precision, I didn't feel like a client.
I felt owned.
Claimed.
His.
"I see it," I whispered, my voice breaking. "I see what you see."
"Then ask me again," He demanded.
"Please." I met my own eyes in the mirror, saw the desperation there, the complete surrender.
Please let me come. Please, Meric, I need—"
My body was already there—balanced on a knife's edge, every nerve ending screaming for release, the physiological cascade primed and waiting. But some final part of my mind was still clutching at control, still trying to manage the experience rather than surrender to it.
"Come," he commanded. "Now. And don't close your eyes."
The permission shattered the last barrier. Not because his words created the climax, but because they gave me permission to stop fighting it. The orgasm that had been coiled tight in my core finally released— not the controlled, manageable release I'd experienced in Session Two but something massive and devastating that tore through me with brutal intensity. I felt it in my core, radiating outward in pulses that made my arms shake and my vision blur.
But I kept my eyes open.
Watched myself shatter.
Watched pleasure transform my face into something unrecognizable—mouth open, eyes wide, every defense mechanism stripped away to reveal the woman underneath.
And in that moment of complete psychological nakedness, I understood what Meric had been trying to teach me all along.
Control wasn't power.
Surrender wasn't weakness.
The ability to choose vulnerability—to look at yourself breaking apart and know that you chose it, that you're safe, that you're seen—that was power.
"I love you," I whispered, the words barely audible even to myself.
Meric's rhythm faltered—just for a second, just enough to confirm he'd heard—but he didn't respond. Just continued moving, drawing out my climax until I was boneless and gasping, held upright only by his hands on my hips.
When the waves finally subsided, he withdrew carefully, and I felt the loss immediately—not just physical but psychological. The emptiness where he'd been.
He guided me to sit back on the platform, then handed me the white robe. I pulled it around myself with shaking hands, suddenly hyperaware of my nakedness in a way I hadn't been while lost in the experience.
Meric stepped back, putting deliberate distance between us. His breathing was controlled, but his hands—those careful, precise hands—were trembling slightly.
"What did you learn?" he asked, his voice clinical again but rougher than usual.
I looked at the three mirrors, at my reflection fragmented across multiple angles, and saw someone different than the woman who'd entered this room an hour ago.
"I learned that I've been treating my body like an enemy when it's actually..." I paused, searching for the right words. "It's actually the most honest part of me. My mind can lie, can rationalize, can construct defenses. But my body knows what it wants. And when I stop fighting that, when I let myself feel instead of think—"
"You're integrated," Meric finished. "Mind and body. No more dissociation."
"Yes."
He nodded, professional satisfaction mixed with something else I couldn't name. "The Integration Period for Session Three is seventy-two hours. Session Four will be scheduled for Day 14. The theme will be—" He stopped himself, seeming to reconsider. "The theme will be decided later."
I stood, pulling the robe tighter, and caught his expression in the mirror behind him.
He looked wrecked.
Controlled on the surface—still wearing the Praxist black, still maintaining the clinical distance—but underneath, something fundamental had shifted.
"Meric," I said quietly.
"Don't." His voice cut sharply. "Don't say whatever you're about to say. We completed the session. The Protocol was followed. That's all this was."
"You heard me."
"I heard you experience a psychological breakthrough accompanied by physical climax. Clients say many things in those moments that don't reflect reality outside the session space."
But the denial was too quick. Too defensive.
He'd heard me say I loved him, and now he was doing exactly what he'd done in The Quiet Suite—pulling away, reconstructing boundaries, hiding behind the methodology to avoid confronting what we both knew was true.
This wasn't just Praxis anymore.
It had stopped being just Praxis the moment our hands had touched on Day 1.
"The session is complete," Meric said again, more firmly this time. "Return to the East Wing. Process what you experienced. I'll send the Session Four notification when I've determined the appropriate Cadence progression."
He left without looking back, the door closing behind him with a soft, final click.
I stood alone in the Subterranean Sessions Chamber, surrounded by three mirrors that reflected a woman I barely recognized—face flushed, hair disheveled, body still humming with the aftershocks of the most intense experience of my life.
And I knew, with absolute clarity, that I'd just crossed a line from which there was no return.
I loved Meric Solvang-Lykke.
Not the Praxist. Not the methodology. Not the structured power dynamic we'd negotiated.
I loved the man who'd designed this session to protect himself by pushing me harder, who'd maintained perfect clinical control even while I'd shattered in his hands, who'd heard me say I loved him and pretended it was just a psychological breakthrough rather than truth.
And in seven more weeks, I would have to walk away from him.
Unless I didn't.