"Does it bother you?" I ask.
"Not really. I hear it, when it's him and Five, next door. She's a screamer. He's always trying to get her to shut up, but as soon as he's got her going, she starts howling like a damn cat in heat. Annoying as hell, you ask me." Rachel stands up, walks with an air of confidence in her nudity.
I follow her. Some carnal curiosity has me looking at her backside; her buttocks are still pink, and I see a glistening smear on the insides of her thighs, low, a trickle of seed seeping out of her.
I am equally repulsed and aroused. Not at the sight of postcoital drip, but at the memory of my own walk from bed to bathroom, the memory of delicious ache, a sense of . . . satisfaction, almost, at the feel of the wet warm stickiness on my skin.
And then, as fast as the sensations roll through me, they are replaced by disgust, and hatred.
Revulsion.
All of it aimed primarily at myself. At my blindness, my gullibility.
At my twisted thoughts. At the fact that any part of me found pleasure in what I overheard.
I hear the shower running, splashing, quickly shut off. Rachel emerges with a towel around her torso.
"You're the problem, ain'tcha?" Her voice is sharp.
Her poor grammar and twanging accent and propensity for cursing lends a false sense that she is somehow unintelligent; she is not.
"The problem?" I pretend to not understand her meaning.
"Don't play coy with me, Madame X. 'Find her,' he said. You're running away from Caleb." The last is an accusation, blatant.
I sigh. "Yes. You're correct."
"He'll find you."
"I know that."
"Ain't nobody else like him, you know. I'm only twenty-two, but I been on the streets since I was thirteen. Met all kinds of men, turnin' tricks. Some of 'em weren't bad, just . . . lonely. Or too busy to bother with even trying to set up casual sex, I guess. Some were curious. A few virgins, here and there. But in all of 'em I ever met, there's never been nobody like him. You must not understand what you're running away from."
"My situation is . . ." I have to hunt for an appropriate word. "Unique."
"Ain't everybody's?" Rachel eyes me.
"Well, I guess that's true, but I'm different. I don't mean to sound--"
"You're different. You're special. I get it. You're Caleb's big secret on the thirteenth floor. What you don't get is what he's done for me. For all of us here. I know what you think of us. I can feel you judging us."
"I'm not judging--"
"The hell you ain't!" She closes in, her eyes intelligent, proud, and piercing. "I was a meth head. Okay? You don't--you can't understand that if you ain't lived it. Alls I cared about was the next fix. I was gonna die, and Caleb Indigo saved me. He got me off the street, gave me a place to live, fed me. He's gotten me off drugs. Before, I was turnin' tricks to afford the next high. No one gave a single shit about me, myself least of all. Now, here? I got a reason to live. I got a reason to stay off drugs. I've got value, here. Yeah, I know I ain't the only one, but Caleb spends time with me. Me, the whore, the drug addict. When he's with me, I'm the only one that matters." This last in a quiet voice that quavers with conviction. "He makes me feel like I could amount to something besides what I used to be. I can get put in the Bride pool, and who knows, maybe I'll even get matched with someone who--who could love me." Such hope, clung to with tenacity. "You run away from all that if you want."
A long silence. I do not know what to say. I have too much in my head, in my heart.
"Garage is your only real shot, I'd say," Rachel says. "Take the elevator down, make a run for it. Good luck to you. I won't say nothing, but if Caleb asks, I'm telling the truth."
"I wouldn't ask you to lie for me." I try a friendly smile. "Thank you, Rachel. And . . . congratulations on your--promotion, I suppose it is?"
She does a part nod, part shrug. "Thanks."
I give her one last smile, one last glance. Then pull open her door, peek, step out. Close the door behind me, a sense of finality in the soft click. Stride away from the door marked 3. Focus on the now, focus on reaching free air, reaching sunlight, reaching the outside.
Step onto the elevator, and my finger hovers over the G. But I hesitate. Why am I hesitating?
I need answers. That's why. Who am I? Who am I to Caleb? What does anything mean?
The conviction in Rachel's voice. Feeling like she was the only one that mattered when she was with Caleb . . . that sounds all too familiar.
Instead of G, my thumb stabs the L, for the lobby.
Descent, my stomach twisting. The doors whoosh open. I step out.
Surprised faces. "Madame X!" Hands reach for me.
I stop them with a glare. "Keep your hands to yourself. Bring me to Caleb." I feign authority.
Pretend I'm not a mess of nerves, shaking, furious, disoriented. Pretend as if everything I thought I knew hasn't just been upended.
Len parts the crowd of onlookers and security guards. A familiar face, at least. "Madame X. Gave us quite a scare. Thought maybe you'd gotten lost." Len's face is impassive, giving away nothing.
"Take me to him, Len."
"Why don't we get you back to your room? Been quite a morning; I'm sure you'd like to rest." A politely phrased command, that is.
"I don't think so, Len. Take me to the penthouse. Now." My eyes are narrowed, my voice hard and cold.
Len blinks twice, lets out a short breath. Lifts his wrist to his mouth. "I've got her, sir. She wants to see you . . . no, she wants me to take her up to the penthouse. . . . Yes, sir. Got it, sir."
Len takes my upper arm, gestures to the elevator on the far right of the bank of doors. This elevator for authorized personnel only. A key opens the doors, the same key twisted to the PH. Ascent, my nerves ratcheting with each foot the elevator climbs. Len is stoic, silent.
I try to formulate thoughts, try to decipher my feelings.
Everything I thought I was going to say flees when the doors slide open at the penthouse level.
"Madame X. Please, come in." Oh, that voice. Deep as canyons, rough as sandpaper.
FOURTEEN
I'm glad to see you've come to your senses." Suppressed fury, teeth clenched.
The doors slide closed behind me, and as soon I hear the elevator whine and fade, I step forward. "You bastard."
"Excuse me?" Disbelief, shock.
"Would you like to know where I was just now, Caleb?" I ask this in my sweetest, most innocent voice.
Dark eyes narrow in suspicion. "Where were you, X? Do enlighten me."
I am chest to chest, staring up. I seethe. "I was on the sixth floor."
"I see."
"In room three. I met a very interesting young woman who said her name was, strangely enough, Three. But then, you see, I was privileged to overhear a very . . . illuminating . . . assessment and promotion, in which she earned a real name."
"I don't know what you think you heard or saw, X, but it's not what you think."
"It isn't? That's strange, because it seemed very much as if what I heard was Three sucking your cock." My blood boils at the memory, at the indignity of my own unstoppable arousal. I cannot temper my fury. "I'm pretty sure what I heard was you fucking her. Just like you fuck me. Which I must say, raises some very interesting questions, Caleb."
"You saw this, did you?" This is said calmly, quietly, in far too even a voice.
"Saw it? No. Heard is a more accurate term, I think. I was under the bed, you see. Hiding from you, and your thugs."
Jaw muscles work. "X, there are elements to all this that you don't--that you can't--understand."
"Then enlighten me, Caleb!" I shout. "Because it feels like I'm just another one of the girls on the sixth floor. Except, I don't get the future they have. I'm kept in the dark, alone, day after day, serving client after client. But I'm not allowed to form a friendship with any of them. I'm not allowed relationships of any kind. Except you, when you deign to visit me, in the middle of
the night. Are you training me, too? Like you're training girls Two through Eight? Teaching me to please a man, before you sell me to the highest bidder? Is that it? Or am I just your dirty little secret on the hidden thirteenth floor? The secret you sneak in to, late at night, to have sex in the dark with, after you've finished training all the other girls. Or am I--"
"You are mine!" comes the venomous hiss, cutting me off. Huge hard hands clutch my face, tilt my head up, brutal fingers holding tight, not allowing me to escape. "You are not like them, X. You're secret because you're special."
"I don't believe you."
"You think I'm selling those girls, X? Is that what you think?" An abrupt change of tactic. "That's not how it is, and if you'd really talked to Rachel, you'd understand that."
"You've got her brainwashed. Like you did me."
"I saved her life, like I did yours! I took her in off the streets and I sat by her as she went through meth withdrawals. I bathed her, and I held her as she shook so hard I thought she'd break a bone, and I fed her with my own hands. That's not something I'd sell like a bag of fucking potatoes! I'm giving her a future, and I'm not going to sit here and defend myself to someone who doesn't have the first fucking clue what I'm about!" I am abruptly released, and long legs begin pacing back and forth, impatient, angry. "You know nothing about me, X. Not the first thing."
"That's the point!" I shout. "What do you think I'm trying to--"
"And have you forgotten what I've done for you? Who was there for you when you woke up, alone?"
"You were, but--"
"And when you couldn't talk, couldn't walk, who wheeled you around in a wheelchair and carried a notebook everywhere, so we could communicate? Who took you to MOMA? Who showed you the Madame X painting? Who held you when you cried at night, every night, for weeks? You had no name, no past. I couldn't return your past to you, but what did I give you, X?"
"An identity," I whisper.
"And a future!" Male scent, heat, fingers gripping my waist. "I built you a life, X. I gave you the best of everything. The best clothes, the best food. An education. Skills. A job, something to keep you from going crazy with boredom! I'm not keeping you prisoner, I'm keeping you safe! Have you forgotten all that?"
"No, I haven't forgotten."
"I don't often bring these things up. You know that. I focus on the now, on the immediate future. I move forward. I don't dwell on what was, X. I don't expect repayment or even thanks." Finger and thumb, pinching my chin, lifting my face. Wide, deep, dark eyes penetrate mine. I cannot look away. "What I do expect, X, is loyalty."
"How dare you?" I pull away. "Loyalty? When you've got eight women just sitting around waiting to service you at your every whim? Hoping for a glimpse of you, hoping for the next . . . assessment? Yet you expect loyalty from me?"
"Do not speak of what you do not understand. And that is something you don't understand."
"You show up in my room late at night, and you fuck me. That's all it is. Just like them. All of them. None of it means anything to you, does it? Not me, not them. We're just . . . receptacles for your . . . male urges, prettied up with fancy excuses." I fight a sob. "And you always leave and I just . . . want it to mean something. But you never give me anything of yourself. It feels good, sure, but when that's over, what am I left with? You said it yourself . . . I don't know the first thing about you. How could I? I don't even know the first thing about myself. But why should that matter, right? I'm just there to satisfy you when you feel like picking me."
There is a silence then, and it is a silence more full of tension and volatility than any I've ever felt.
"How can you not see, X?" This, so quiet I have to strain to hear it.
"See what, Caleb?"
"See that you're special to me. I keep you apart. I keep you for--for myself. Those girls, Rachel and the others, I've got to give them away. They're all fucking damaged, and I'm trying to make them whole. I know you don't get it, but that's what I'm trying to do. I don't sell them, I match them. All of them, each one, they'll all get matched with someone who will appreciate them, even love them. It works. I've seen it work. But in order for them to go out and be the wives they need to be, they have to feel beautiful. They need to feel their own self-worth. And when they come to me, when they enter the program, they don't."
A few paced steps brings a body I cannot ignore to stand beside me. A long index finger touches my cheekbone, traces its curve. "But you, X. You're special. I always knew you would be. When I first found you, I just knew I had to help you. And yes, I was eventually going to put you in the program. But I couldn't. I can't."
There is a flaw in this logic, somewhere, but I'm dizzy, lost. Heat overwhelms my senses, the sudden and unexpected rush of truth drowns out my logic. Hands span my waist, gripping with fierce need. Lips touch my earlobe. There is tenderness here, and it is so alien and so welcome.
"Why?" I whisper it. "Why can't you?"
"I can't give you away to someone else, because you're mine. You belong to me. I can't share you. I won't. You're . . ." Adam's apple bobs with a hard swallow. "You mean something to me, X." Behind me now.
I've never heard such things from this mouth. Never seen such intensity or openness. I am flooded with doubt.
Lips touch my throat, and sorcery subsumes me, weaves me into the dark thrall of its warp and weft.
"Don't you feel it?" Broad, powerful hands on my belly. "Don't you feel . . . us?"
Oh, that word. Us. It means belonging. I want it. I want to believe.
"Do you feel it, X?"
"I feel it, Caleb." And I do. I do.
I shouldn't, but I do. I am weak. So weak.
I am falling under the spell.
My thighs tremble, my belly quivers and tightens. Need pulses in me. The hard body behind me is huge and powerful and incites something hungry within me. I cannot help but lean my head back, baring my throat. One huge hand slides up my body, cups my breast, and then curls around my throat, gentle, but insistent. The other skates down my body, over my belly, down between my thighs. Cups me, there. Fingers curl and gather the edge of my dress, lift it. Inch by inch, my thighs are bared. Then my hips. Then the black sheer mesh over my privates, the skinny string around my waist.
One hand at my throat, the other at my core. One cupping, the other clutching. One clamped with enough pressure to render me tremulous with a hint of fear, the other digging under silk to find flesh, stealing my breath.
"You're mine, X."
I can only moan in response. Fingers curl, slip in, find me sensitive and needy, press just so to set me shaking, knees weak.
I come, quickly and hard.
But I'm not done. Oh no. While I gather my strength to stand up on my own, the fingers slip out of me and unzip trousers. My dress is up around my hips, hot breath on my ear, and now my underwear has vanished, leaving me bare from the waist down, the air cool and my damp core hot. I hear shoes kicked off, pants and belt thud on the floor. Feet nudge mine apart, and a hand pushes me forward. My bottom is bared, exposed. I drip with need. I ache. God, I ache.
The hand on my throat has not slackened its grip, and now, bent forward, that grip is all that keeps me from falling over.
A deep-throated groan, and I am filled. Deep, slow, and hard.
"You feel it, X? You feel us?"
I don't know how to fathom this. Words have never entered this equation, have never been a part of this act. "Yes, Caleb."
"Yes, what?"
"Yes, I feel it."
But it's the same, still. Despite the words, despite the palpable emotion, it's the same. I see only the floor. Feel only what I'm allowed to feel.
But then something changes. A thrust, another. I moan, stumble, shake, only the hand on my throat keeping me upright. I'm dizzy with lack of breath. I'm not being choked, but it is still limiting my oxygen.
Control.
I want more.
"Let me see you, Caleb." I say it, out loud, and I am amazed at my o
wn daring.
The presence within me vanishes, and I am hauled upright by a sharp tug on my hair. Hands turn me. Eyes fiery, blazing, burning, dark and unknowable. "You want to see me?"
God, that body is dizzyingly perfect. All hard angles and huge muscles. Carved, cut, and perfect. I reach, and for a split second I am allowed to touch firm flesh, but only for a moment.
Hands strip the dress off me, make short work of the strapless bra, and then I'm naked.
I am pushed backward, and I trip over something.
So focused on the man in front of me, am I, that I've noticed nothing of the space around me. That does not change now. A couch, I think. I fall backward over the arm of a couch, and male heat and hardness follows me over. On my back, my legs dangle over the edge, hang into space. A broad wedge of male flesh and muscle fills that space, parting my legs. Hands grip my thighs, pull me, and then grip my hips and lift me. I can see the sharp angles and dark stubble, wild, angry eyes, thin slash of a mouth. I have a moment of breath, a moment to look, to see slablike pectorals and grooved abdomen, and then one sharp thrust drives the thick shaft into me.
I let out a gasp of surprise. It scrapes within me, fills me in a strange angle, fullness but different. Hands gripping my hips, I am lifted and pulled backward into the next thrust, which is hard and rough.
"Oh--oh God." It hurts, these hard thrusts, but they feel good as well.
"You're mine, X. You fucking belong to me."
Hips slam in between my thighs, and I am rocked forward, but strong hands keep me hauled taut for the next powerful drive.
Dark eyes do not leave mine. I cannot look away, not even to close my eyes as orgasmic tremors blow through me. Cannot look away, do not.
"Mine." A rocking thrust, sending me over the edge. "Say it, X. Fucking say it! Say you're mine."
I need the next thrust, need it to stay here on the far side of bliss, where everything is nothing, and nothing matters but the heat and fullness and the slight ache and burn and twinge and the grip of hands on my hips and the slam of body against body. Right now, that's all that matters. I am conditioned to need that, this moment, this now. It's all I am.
"I'm yours, Caleb." I say on a whimper, a sob.
As soon as those three words leave my lips, I feel the hot wet rush of release within me, feel that heavy body collapse forward, and I accept the weight, feel hard muscle under my hands. Stubble on my face, cheek against cheek. A moment of mutual breathing, harsh and ragged.
Madame X Page 18
