Madame X (Madame X #1) (26 page)

This feels like curling up next to a lion in its cage.

You reach out a hand, and I tense, cease breathing.

But all you do is touch me, a single forefinger stroking upward from my thigh to my hip, over my waist, up my ribs, to my breast.

“You are beautiful.” A murmur, as from the bottom of the turbulent dark sea.

“Thank you.” I shift to the side, drape my arm behind me so your tentatively touching finger can brush from breast back down to my hip.

I dare touch your bicep. The lion twitches, and I know I could be devoured in a split second.

A game of touches, exploration of mutuality: a fingertip to my nipple, my palm sliding from knee to jagged hip bone; tracing my backside, following the curve from outer edge of hip to inner crease and up my spine, my fingers on the furrowed field of your abs.

You do not speak, and I don’t dare break the magic of this. It is too fragile.

My eyes droop, weigh heavily.

Touch skates over me, hesitant and gentle and smooth and slow.

I drift, and drowse . . .

And sleep.

I
wake alone.

Silence.

“Caleb?”

Nothing.

Dawn streaks through the window. I look to the left, and see that my closet door is open. The racks are bare, not even a hanger in sight.

My throat seizes. I leap out of bed, headed for my library.

It is there, intact.

I return to my bedroom, to my closet. Empty. Totally empty. Even the bureau against the far wall of the walk-in closet is empty. I have not a single stitch of clothing left to me.

Back out to the living room. The couch is gone, the coffee table, the Louis XIV armchair. The dining room table is gone.

My front door stands open.

The elevator door is open, the key in the slot inside the car.

I am utterly confused.

Back inside, to the library. There is my chair and the table in the triangle between shelves. On the table is an envelope containing a stack of hundred-dollar bills, and a note handwritten in bold, slanting letters:

M
ADAME
X
,

T
HIS DRESS IS THE ONE
I
FOUND YOU IN.
I
T’S YOURS, FROM BEFORE.

I
LEAVE YOU THE BOOKS, BECAUSE
I
KNOW YOU TREASURE THEM.

T
HE CAMERAS AND MICROPHONES ARE OFF.

T
HERE WILL BE NO MORE CLIENTS.

L
EAVE, IF YOU WISH; THERE IS MONEY ENOUGH IN THE ENVELOPE TO ALLOW YOU TO GO WHEREVER YOU WISH.
B
UT IF YOU DO CHOOSE TO LEAVE, YOU WILL BE ON YOUR OWN.
I
WILL NOT CHASE YOU THIS TIME.

O
R, YOU MAY TAKE THE ELEVATOR UP TO THE PENTHOUSE.
B
UT IF YOU CHOOSE THIS, YOU LEAVE EVERYTHING IN THIS APARTMENT WHERE IT IS, AND COME TO ME AS YOU ARE NOW, NAKED, WITH ONLY THE NAME YOU CHOSE FOR YOURSELF THAT DAY IN THE
M
USEUM OF
M
ODERN
A
RT.

~C
ALEB

Folded on the cushion of the chair is a dress. Deep, dark blue. Of course. A shade of blue that seems to be a defining feature in my life . . .

Caleb Indigo.

Logan’s indigo eyes.

And now this dress . . .

Indigo.

Except this dress is not new. Not beautiful. It was, once, perhaps. I lift it, and I am strangled by ravaging emotion. I do not recognize this dress; it is ripped, torn. From neckline to hem, it is torn open. Ripped in half and stained with blood. There is another rip, this one on the side, low, on the right.

I touch my right hip, where there is a scar.

There is blood staining the dark blue fabric at the neckline, all over the shoulders, down the back.

Why, I don’t know, but I lift it, step through the gaping hole. Fit my arms through the sleeves. Tug the ends together.

It is too small. Even undamaged, it wouldn’t fit me. I am too large in the bust and backside for this dress. Too tall, as well, perhaps.

Six years.

I would have been around eighteen or nineteen when I last wore this dress.

I remove the dress; I feel as if phantoms of the past cling to my skin, seeping into me from the fabric.

The tag says
Sfera
. Even the style is strange to me. So short, coming not even to midthigh. Sleeveless, intact the neckline would have been high around my throat, but the back gapes open to midspine. I stare at the material clutched in my hand, a useless clue to who I used to be. An empty fragment of my past.

The girl who wore this dress from Sfera . . . who was she? What was her name? Did she have parents? A sister? What did she like to do? Did she have friends? Did she sketch hearts on notebooks? Did she have a crush on a boy? Did she speak Spanish? If she did, I have forgotten it.

This dress can tell me nothing. I cannot even wear it, and if I could, if I could sew the ends together . . . would I?

No.

So this choice of yours, Caleb?

I see through it.

It is a way of retaking what you feel I took from you last night.

Naked, hesitant, I enter the elevator, twist the key to the
PH
.

The doors close, and the car rises.

The doors open, and now I see the penthouse, whereas the last time I was here, I didn’t, not really.

Expansive space, thick white carpeting, a wall of windows with a commanding view of the city. Black modern furniture. I recognize the sectional in front of the elevator as the one Caleb had me over. It is one of a set: an L-shaped couch, a modern minimalist chair, a small round silver table, and another chair, forming a small square to block off the space in front of the elevator.

In the distance, in the farthest corner of the penthouse, the kitchen, and near it a small eating nook in the corner where two walls of glass merge. You are there, sitting at the table, leaned back in a chair, elegantly casual in blue jeans and a white crew neck T-shirt. A mug in your hands, a rectangular electronic tablet on the table in front of you.

There is a place setting beside you. A saucer and a cup. A plate, with a bagel neatly presented, sliced into halves, one half laid facedown on a just-so angle atop the other. Precise, perfect.

“Come, sit.” Your voice is very far away: The penthouse is enormous; it suits you exactly.

I cross the space hesitantly. If there is anyone in the buildings across the street, they can see me, and I am still naked.

You smile as I approach you, set down your mug of coffee.

You stand. Pull off your plain white T-shirt. Settle it onto my
head, tug the neck opening over me, and I feed my arms through the sleeves. Clothed, somewhat, I feel more confident.

I glance at the cup of tea—I can see the tag:
Harney & Sons Earl Grey
—and the bagel, plain with light cream cheese spread thin. “You knew I’d come.”

Your eyes are still impenetrable, but I am starting to see glimmers of something. Perhaps I am finally learning to read you. Or perhaps you are learning to let me.

“Of course I did,” you say. “You are mine.”

And this, from you, is a truth I cannot deny.

The question is: Do I want to
be?

Continue reading for a sneak peek at the second book in the Madame X trilogy . . .

EXPOSED

By
Jasinda Wilder

Coming soon from Berkley
Books!

I
am drowning in an ocean of darkness. The sky is the sea, dark masses of roiling clouds like waves, spreading in every direction and weighing heavily on me like the titanic bulk of Homer’s wine-dark seas. I lie on my back on the rooftop, leftover heat from the previous day still leaching out of the rough concrete and into my skin through the thin T-shirt that is all I’m wearing.

I want to see the stars, someday. I imagine them like a spray of salt on a black table cloth. Like a handful of diamonds against silk.

There are four small black speakers planted in unobtrusive locations around the rooftop, and music floats from them in serene, soothing waves.

Debussy, you said it was:
Clair de Lune.
A piano, creating a light and airy atmosphere in this lonely evening.

You’ve left for the evening. Business. Nothing I would enjoy, you claimed. Listen to music, drink wine, you’ll be back and we’ll go somewhere.

Things have changed, but then again, they haven’t, really, have they?

Perhaps I doze.

I sense a presence as I wake up, but I don’t open my eyes. Perhaps your business didn’t take as long as you’d thought. I feel you sit beside me, and your finger touches my hair, smooths it off my forehead.

But then I smell cinnamon and cigarettes.

I crack my eyes open, and it isn’t you.

“Logan.” I whisper it, surprised. “How are you here?”

He shrugs. “Bribes, distraction . . . it wasn’t hard.”

“You shouldn’t be here.”

He fits a cigarette to his mouth, cups his hands around it, and I hear a scrape and a click. Flame bursts orange, briefly, and then the smell of cigarette smoke is pungent and acrid. His cheeks go concave, his chest expands, and then he blows out a white plume from his nostrils. “No, I shouldn’t.”

“Then why are you here?” I sit up, and I’m self-conscious of the fact that all I’m wearing is a thin short white T-shirt, and nothing else.

“I had to talk to you.”

“What is there to say?”

His eyes flick shamelessly over me. A breeze kicks up, and my nipples harden, my skin pebbles. Perhaps it isn’t the wind so much as Logan, though. His eyes, that strange and vivid blue, his proximity, his sudden and unexpected and inexplicable presence on this rooftop, in my life.

“There’s a lot I could say, actually.” His eyes certainly speak volumes.

“Then say it,” I say, and it is a challenge.

Smoke curls up from the cigarette between his fingers. “Caleb, he’s not who you think he is.”

“And you know that, do you? Who he really is?”

“Certain things, yes.” He takes a long drag on the cigarette, holds it in, blows it out through his nose again.

“You sneaked in here to tell me all of Caleb’s secrets?”

He shakes his head, almost angrily, blond hair waving around his shoulders. “No, I didn’t,” he confesses. “You made the wrong choice. You should have stayed with me. We could have had something amazing.”

“There was never a choice, Logan.” It feels a little like a lie.

Another long inhalation, exhaling smoke like a dragon. “After you left with Caleb, I did some digging.”

“What do you mean, digging?” I reach for the bottle of wine, which, ironically, is Malbec.

Pour some, take a sip. I need something to do with my hands, somewhere to look that isn’t Logan.

“I looked around for information on you.” He says it quietly, flicking his thumb across the butt of the cigarette.

“Did you find anything?” I almost don’t want to ask.

A long pause, smoke rising in a thin curl, an occasional drag. I let the silence hang, let it weigh as heavily as the clouds.

“Information is power, you know.” He stabs out his cigarette with a short, angry twist of his wrist. “I want to . . . to blackmail you with this, what I found out. Not tell you unless you come with me. But then I’d be no better than Caleb.”

I digest what he’s insinuating. “You think Caleb knows who I am and isn’t telling me?”

“I think he knows more than he’s told you, yes.” He stands up, unfolding his lean frame, and strides away from me across the rooftop, stopping to put his hands on the waist-high wall separating him from the tumble into space. “Do you remember that day in my house, in the hallway? When I got back from walking Cocoa?”

I swallow hard. “Yes, Logan. I remember.”

I remember too well. It recurs, a dream, a fantasy, memories assaulting me as I bathe, as I try to sleep, lost details of hands and mouths when I wake up.

“You were naked. Every inch of your fucking incredible skin, bare for me. I had you in my arms. I
had
you, X. I had my hands on you, had you on my lips, on my tongue. I can smell your pussy. I can still taste you, almost. But I let you go. I . . . made you walk away.” He turns, glances at me, at my legs bare under the shirt. As if he can smell me, as if he can see what lies beneath the thin white cotton. “I don’t think you’ll ever understand how much that cost me, to walk away from you. How much self-control that took.”

I shake all over. “Logan, I—”

“You would have let me. If I had pushed you up against the wall and done what I wanted to do to you . . . you would have let me. And you wouldn’t have left, because you’d have wanted more.”

I can’t disagree. “I wasn’t—”

He turns away, resumes staring out at the skyline, continuing as if I hadn’t spoken. “I feel . . . haunted by that. I had you, and I let you go. I’m not haunted by the fact that you’re gone, though, that I let you get away. I’m haunted by the fact that I still know it was the right thing to do. As much as I hate it, as much as it hurts, you aren’t ready for me.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I stand up now, tug the hem of the shirt down so I’m almost covered. Move, so I’m standing a few feet behind him. “And I thought you said you found something out about me.”

He reaches into the back pocket of his jeans, pulls out a square of folded paper. Holds it, stares at it. The wind plucks at the paper, fluttering the corners, as if it wants to rip it away, keep it from me, whatever is written there. He pivots so he faces me. Steps closer. I
stop breathing. I tingle all over. My skin remembers the feel of his skin, the taste of his tongue. I shouldn’t. That is not the choice I made. But . . . I can’t forget it. And deep down, I don’t want to.

“X, when I said there’s so much I could say? I don’t know how to say it all. I want to take you away, again. Run off with you, make you mine. But that wouldn’t be enough for me. I’m a proud man, X. I want you to
choose
me. And I think you will, someday.”

He presses his body against mine, and I feel every inch of him, hard, taut, warm. My breasts flatten against his chest, my hips bump against his. Something in me throbs, aches. Recognizes him, feels pulled by him. I forget everything, in these moments, except how utterly stolen away and carried off into the wild wind I feel with him.

The paper crinkles against my bicep as he grips me, a hand on my arm, a palm to my cheek.

No.

Don’t.

“Don’t, Logan,”
I whisper, but maybe the words are only a breath, only a sigh, only the minuscule brush of my eyelashes fluttering against my cheek, the sweep of lips against lips.

He does.

He kisses me,

and kisses me,

and kisses me.

And I don’t stop him. My traitorous body wants to writhe and meld to his, wants to wrap itself around him. My hands sneak up to his hair, bury in the blond waves, and my throat utters a sigh, and maybe a moan, a slight one, a feverish, desperate one.

It is but a moment, a single moment.

A fortieth of an hour.

But it is one in which I feel utterly changed, as if some too-loose skin draped over my skeleton is snatched away and my true form is
revealed, as if his touch as if his kiss as if his very presence can make me more truly
me
.

I want to weep.

I want to sag against him and beg him to keep kissing me until I cannot bear any more of the soft and tender intensity.

He backs away, wiping his wrist across his mouth, chest heaving as if desperately battling some inner demon. “Here.” He hands me the square of folded paper. “It’s your name.”

I feel struck by lightning, wired, surging with too much of everything, too much heat, too much fear, too much doubt, too much need.

He puts a hand to the half wall, as if supporting himself, as if about to leap over and fly away.

“Logan . . .” I don’t have anything else I can say.

“You have to decide if you want to know,” he says. “Because once you know . . . you can’t take it back. Once you start questioning, there’s no stopping it.”

“I
have
to know now, don’t I?” I ask, almost angry at him. “You posed the question, and now I have to have the answer.”

“True.” He lets out a breath. Moves to walk past me, but stops a breath and a touch away. His indigo eyes meet mine. “You can come with me. We can leave New York.” He glances up at the cloud-shrouded sky. “I can take you somewhere far away and show you the stars.”

Could he have heard that wish? Can he see into my mind, read my thoughts? Sometimes I wonder if he can.

“But . . . You won’t.” He wipes a thumb across my lips. “Not yet, anyway.”

He almost seems about to kiss me again, and I’m not entirely sure I would survive another stolen kiss, another breathless moment far too close to a man who seems to see far too much of me.

“If you ask the questions, X . . . you can’t shy away from the answers when you find them.”

I don’t watch him leave. I can’t. I won’t.

I don’t dare.

A long, long, painful silence, stretching like a rubber band about to snap. When I’m sure I’m alone, I finally look away from the skyline, from the dark shapes of skyscrapers and apartment blocks, away from the clouds and the dim distant lights. The rooftop is empty once more, but for me and the ghost of Logan’s kiss.

I open the square of paper, unfolding it once and again.

Written there in messy male handwriting is a name.

If I could prevent myself from reading it, I almost would. But I don’t.

Logan has given me my name.

I both love him for it, and hate him for
it.