It was another restless night for me.
This time, the ceiling gave me nothing to project onto. My body had its own agenda.
I lay in the dark of Suite 3, staring at the ceiling, reliving every moment of Session One. The leather cuffs around my wrists. The blindfold stealing my sight. Meric's hands on my body—smooth, controlled, devastating. The way he'd brought me so close to climax, I could taste it, then stopped completely.
And the forty-eight hours stretching ahead before I could have it again.
My body hadn't forgotten. Even now, hours later, I was still aroused. A low, persistent hum beneath my skin that wouldn't dissipate no matter how many times I tried the breathing exercises, the progressive muscle relaxation, all the clinical interventions I'd prescribed to patients a thousand times.
I made it to the third cycle of progressive muscle relaxation before I stopped pretending.
Because this wasn't anxiety. This was want.
The clinical term was sexual frustration. I'd used it in intake assessments. I'd written it in case notes. It had never felt like this — like a low electrical current with no ground wire, looking for somewhere to discharge.
I pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to think about something else. Anything else. But my mind kept circling back to the same moment: Meric's voice, quiet and firm, saying I'm going to bring you to the edge. But I'm not going to let you climax.
And I'd believed it was cruelty.
But lying here now, body still singing with frustrated need, I understood. I didn't want to, and I understood anyway — which was, I suspected, exactly the point. The methodology was designed to make insight and discomfort arrive together, so you couldn't accept one without the other.
Teaching me to exist in a state of arousal without immediately seeking release. Without controlling, managing, and fixing. Just... feeling.
The methodology was working. I noted this with the detached professional appreciation of someone watching their own surgery.
I sat up, abandoning the pretense of sleep. The clock on the nightstand read 4:47 AM. Breakfast wouldn't be delivered for another two hours. Session Two wasn't for another forty-six hours.
Forty-four hours. I had no productive framework for forty-four hours.
By the time the sun rose over the fjord, I'd showered, dressed, and decided that staying in my suite was untenable. I needed a distraction. Distance. Something to occupy my brain that wasn't replaying the sensation of Meric's thumb tracing circles against me.
I left Suite 3 and headed to the library.
The East Wing was silent at this hour. Most clients—if there were any others, I still wasn't sure—were probably still sleeping. The meditation room was empty, its circular space peaceful and utterly useless to me right now. Meditation required stillness. I needed movement.
The library was slightly better. I scanned the shelves, looking for something—anything—that might hold my attention. Philosophy. Psychology. Several novels I'd already read. I'd scanned the same shelves twice the night I arrived. The academic section hadn't changed. But I was reading it differently now — the way you read a manual after you've already operated the machine. I pulled the densest thing I could find from the academic shelf and sat in the leather chair by the window.
I read for an hour.
Somewhere around page forty, I stopped absorbing the text and started scanning it — moving through paragraphs the way you move through a crowd looking for a specific face.
I'd been looking for Meric in it.
Trying to understand his methodology. Decode his techniques. Predict what he'd do in Session Two so I wouldn't be caught off-guard again.
I closed the book.
This was exactly what he'd warned me about. I was analyzing instead of experiencing. Trying to control the Praxis by intellectually mastering it.
But I didn't know how to stop.
This was the problem with being a therapist. I knew exactly what my pattern was. Knowing didn't touch it.
"You're up early."
I looked up to find Vigdis standing in the library doorway, two coffee cups in hand. She was dressed in her usual black tactical pants and fitted jacket, blonde hair pulled back severely, but her expression was less remote than usual.
"I couldn't sleep," I said.
"Normal after a first session." She crossed the room and handed me one of the cups. "Especially when you've been denied."
I took the coffee. There was no social scaffolding around that sentence — no courtesy, no hedge. I noted the absence. "How do you know—"
"I've worked here twelve years," Vigdis said simply. She sat in the chair across from me. "I know what frustration looks like."
I sipped the coffee to avoid responding. It was exactly how I'd made it yesterday—strong, black, no sugar.
"Can I ask you something?" I said finally.
"Go ahead."
"How long has the Institute been running?"
"Fifteen years. Meric's father founded it. Meric took over when his father died twelve years ago."
I absorbed that. "And you've been here since almost the beginning."
"Since the beginning." She set her cup down with the precision of someone who never put anything anywhere carelessly. "Some of us were here before the first client walked through the door."
I didn't know what to do with that. So I didn't do anything with it.
"And Meric kept you on."
"Meric trusts very few people. I earned that trust by being ruthlessly competent and never crossing lines." She paused. "Which is why I'm going to tell you something you need to hear."
She watched me process this the way someone watches a test subject process new information — not with concern, but with attention. There was a difference. I filed it.
My stomach tightened. "What?"
"The Institute has cameras in all common areas. Corridors, library, dining room, meditation space. Not in your suite, not in the session chambers. But everywhere else." She gestured to the corner of the library ceiling. "That's one."
I followed her gaze and saw it—a small, discreet camera, barely noticeable if you weren't looking.
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked.
"Because you're the kind of person who needs to know the rules before you can decide whether to follow them." Vigdis set down her coffee. "The surveillance exists for safety. To ensure clients aren't harming themselves, and to track any security irregularities. The footage is reviewed weekly by me. It's not voyeurism. It's protection."
"Does Meric watch it?"
The answer came a half-second late. "When necessary."
"Has he watched mine?"
"I can't discuss what Meric does or doesn't review." Her voice was carefully neutral. "But I will tell you that everything recorded is kept confidential. No one outside this Institute sees it. Ever."
The way she said ever—with absolute conviction—made me believe her.
But it also made me wonder what had happened to make that promise necessary.
"You mentioned a security breach before," I said carefully. "In our first conversation. Has someone tried to access the footage?"
Vigdis was quiet for exactly one beat longer than the question required. "Five years ago, there was an... incident. A former client attempted to obtain recordings of her sessions. For legal leverage in an unrelated matter."
"Did she succeed?"
"No. But it revealed vulnerabilities in our systems. We've since upgraded everything. Biometric access. Encrypted servers. Air-gapped storage." She met my eyes. "Your sessions are safe. Your privacy is absolute."
It was a complete answer. Which meant it was also a rehearsed one. I'd given enough complete answers in my own clinical practice to recognise the shape of them — the slight over-precision, the way reassurance arrives pre-packaged when someone has delivered it before.
I nodded as though I believed her.
The warning in her register was precise — not a threat, not sympathy. An operational assessment delivered by someone who had watched this particular trajectory before and knew where it ended.
"The Praxist who crossed that line," I said. "Did he see it coming?"
Vigdis considered this the way she considered everything — briefly, completely. "No," she said. "That's usually how it goes."
She picked up both cups. "The point is, the methodology has a failure mode. Most things do."
"I'm not going to violate Clause 7.3," I said quietly.
"I didn't think you would." Vigdis moved toward the door. "But feelings don't ask permission before they show up. So just... be aware of what you're feeling. And why."
She left. I sat with the coffee going cold in my hands and turned over what she'd said — feelings don't ask permission before they show up. I knew this. I'd said exactly this to patients. I hadn't expected to need the reminder before the end of the first week.