Madame X

by Jasinda Wilder

  BEEPBEEPEBEEPBEEP

  Cocoa leaps at me, barking, puts wet paws on my bare shoulders.

  Utter chaos ensues for a wild moment.

  Logan is shoving at Cocoa, who is blocking the doorway, which in turn has me stumbling backward. Beyond Logan, rain is sluicing down in hammering bucketfuls, so thick it obscures my view of the street beyond.

  The alarm is beeping faster and faster, and Cocoa is on top of me, barking, tail wagging, smearing muddy paw prints on me and on the towel, and her claws catch in the cotton of the towel and loosen it, threatening to tug it away. Logan steps over Cocoa, stabbing at the alarm panel to disarm it, then slamming the door closed.

  I shove Cocoa away with one hand, trying to stand up while holding the towel in place with the other.

  Logan is soaked to the bone, his gray T-shirt all but see-through now, sticking to abs so grooved and ridged and hard they could be carved from stone, sticking to his lean upper body, hard, chiseled pectorals, broad shoulders. His hair is lank and stringy and sticking to his cheeks and chin.

  Rainwater puddles at his feet, and his eyes are hot blue orbs, locked on mine. Neither of us moves. I am not breathing.

  The towel covering my torso is hanging loose around me, held up only by one of my hands, the other still fending off Cocoa's muddy and exuberant greetings.

  "Cocoa . . . sit." His voice is faint, as if he has to remember how to speak. "Stay, Cocoa."

  The dog sits . . . on my feet. Wet fur, on my feet. She stinks of wet dog, a pungent smell.

  I unwind the towel wrapped in a turban around my hair and hand it to Logan, who, without looking away from me, kneels beside his dog, unclips her leash, and wipes her down carefully and lovingly, each one of her paws, her legs, her long body, her floppy ears, over and over until she's wiggling to get free.

  "Go to your room, Cocoa. Go lie down." His voice is still faint, and he's still staring at me, and I can't move, paralyzed somehow by the superheated blue of Logan's gaze.

  Cocoa barks once, and then trots into her room.

  My back is to the wall, cold against my bare spine. I need to cover myself, but I can't.

  Logan is in front of me, standing tall and broad mere inches away, and he's wet, too, but now he's so warm he feels like he could be steaming. I smell him, man-scent as pungent as wet dog.

  He lifts his shirt, peels it off, baring a torso that is a sculpted wonder of lean, corded muscle. He isn't a mammoth bear of a man, not like the only other male body I've seen in this state of undress. Clad in those faded blue jeans and nothing else, he is tall, over six feet, but he is a man of razor sharpness, each muscle defined as if cut into his body, each muscle lean and hard. He has no spare flesh or muscle, nothing extra, nothing unneeded. He is all hard lines and deeply etched grooves. There are scars, too. Thin white lines crisscrossing his left pectoral, his right bicep, and left forearm high up near the elbow. Two round puckered scars on his right shoulder, one in the meat of his muscle, the other higher up on the collarbone, and a third lower down, just beneath his ribs. There are tattoos coloring the skin on his shoulder, a nearly indecipherable jumble of images on his left arm from collarbone to just above the elbow, so that they'd be all but hidden if he wore a short-sleeve shirt. I see cartoon pinup girls and flames and a Jolly Roger made of a grinning skull and crossed assault rifles and initials in Old English lettering nearly hidden in a snarl of barbed wire, phrases I can't quite make out in the same lettering. The whole tangle of images begins just above his elbow, designed as if to grow out of a tree whose roots wrap around his bicep, the jumble of images and designs forming the trunk, and the branches extending in skeletal fingers across his collarbone and back toward his shoulder blades.

  My fingers itch to trace the images, to sort them and name them and find out their stories.

  His shirt plops to the floor, a wet sound. Water streams in rivulets down his face, over his neck and shoulders, and follows the line of his sternum, over his diaphragm, and into the deeply etched grooves of his abdomen.

  "You got mud on you," he murmurs, his voice a smooth basso ribbon sliding over me. His fingers trace across the upper slope of my breast, through the muddy paw print.

  "Well, I was clean," I say, for lack of anything better.

  "Now we'll have to fight over the shower."

  "You go. This will wipe off."

  He reaches down between us, takes the end corner of the towel, lifts it, and wipes at the mud until my skin is clean again. "There. Good as new."

  Of course, in lifting the towel, he bared a significant portion of my bare skin, from knee to belly. The air is cold on my skin, and I'm trembling. Or maybe it's Logan making me tremble.

  One hand pressed to my chest, keeping me at least nominally covered, I mirror his action, lifting a corner of the towel and using it to wipe at the droplets of water on his chest.

  How easy it would be to drop the towel. Some part of me wants to, feels daring enough to risk it. To let him see me. To let him touch me, skin to bare skin.

  I wonder if he can read my mind: His hand steals around my back, tugs me to him. I stumble, and willingly fall against him, cheek to chest. Heartbeat, like a drum: Bumpbump--bumpbump--bumpbump. His flesh is warm, smooth, firm, damp. My cheek sticks to his chest, but I have no desire to pull away. My hands are on his chest, palms flat against his skin on either side of my head. My left palm is on the right side of his chest, and I can feel the puckered scars there. Bullet wounds, is my guess. My fingertips touch the scars, trace them gently.

  Logan murmurs in my ear. "Those weren't as bad as they look. Hit meat and bone, mostly." He takes my hand, moves it down so my fingers touch the wound just beneath his rib cage. "This one nearly got me. Rotated home, took me damn near six months to recover. Nicked the bottom of my lung, narrowly missed a few other important bits."

  Who is this crazy woman inhabiting my body? Not me, not the self I'm accustomed to being. This woman, she is wild, daring. She clutches his ribs with both hands, feeling thick slabs of muscle under sensitive, exploring fingertips. This woman, this me, this X? Her lips touch skin. Feather over tattoos, cross the centerline of his sternum, kiss, kiss, kiss, and touch those wicked scars. My lips, his skin; explosive chemistry. Delicate touch, just a breath, motion across flesh, but enough to set me ablaze. I feel him shake under my hands, under my mouth. I kiss each scar. I don't know why. Each long-healed slice on his skin--"Close encounters of the shrapnel kind," he murmurs--a kiss. A burn mark on his forearm, shiny, too smooth, rippled--"Got too close to a hot rifle barrel," he whispers in explanation--kissed.

  Every time my lips touch his skin, he inhales sharply, as if my mouth is afire, as if my tongue is white-hot, scorching his flesh.

  Bare skin under my hands, hard muscle . . . I'm addicted. Drunk with him. I pause the skein of kisses, lips on his clavicle, and just touch. Fingers on his shoulder blades, tracing the bright ink I can see with eyes closed, even, down low to explore his waist above denim, slipping palms up sides to stutter fingertips over ribs. A poem of touch, a song of kisses.

  "X, you gotta stop." His voice is tense, wired, slow with precision.

  "Why?" I've never felt such need, felt such pleasure in merely touching. I revel in being allowed to touch as I wish, no guidance, no commands, no instructions. Only touching as I wish, mouth moving of its own volition, my small hands exploring a work of art.

  "Because now isn't the time." He grabs my left hand, gathers my right into the same gentle grip, brushes my hair out of my face with his empty hand. "And you keep this up, I'll forget that."

  "What isn't it the time or place for?" I look up as I ask this, meet his eyes.

  "For what I want to do with you, and how long it's going to take." Oh, the promise in those eyes, those words.

  I shiver. "Oh."

  "Yeah." He draws a deep breath, as if for courage.

  His eyes roam my face, as if memorizing. My hands still pinioned in the gentle circle of his left hand, his right nudges my chi
n up, tilting my face up to his, the pad of his thumb brushing my cheek and then skating over my forehead, sliding a lock of hair away.

  "Damn it," he murmurs,

  and kisses me,

  and kisses me,

  and kisses me.

  Breathless, dizzy, heart madly beating, lungs seizing, hands fluttering and clutching, I kiss him in return.

  A kiss. Such a simple thing. Two mouths meeting. Lips touching, a little moist, tender yet firm, hungry yet tentative. Hands reach, dare closer to erogenous samples of skin. So simple. Yet so complex, so fraught with meaning. Pulsing with questions, throbbing with possibility.

  Does he kiss me to begin something else, something more?

  Do I kiss him to beg for more?

  Can we kiss to merely kiss, to find each other's fathom, to plumb the depths of desire without the vulnerability of shared nakedness?

  I break his hold on my wrists. Reach up, snake both arms around his strong neck, cling to him. Press up against him. We pause for breath, lips touching but not locked, gasping, eyes open and seeing one another from so close that features blur. His eyes are blue like the deepest ocean, the shade of night just past twilight when the sun has sunk and stars do not yet pierce the sky. His hands find my waist, find skin--all there is to find of me is bare flesh, for I am naked, and unashamed, and full of hunger.

  The floor falls away, and my legs wrap around the hard wedge of his hips. The taut firmness of his belly is hot against my bare core. He spins, presses my spine to the window. His hands cup my naked bottom, keeping me aloft effortlessly, his tongue delves into my mouth, steals my sense and my breath, steals my will, steals my desire to know anything but this, but his kiss, but this moment.

  I clutch his face, palms to faint stubble. I am confident in his hold on me. Given over to him. Lost to this. Anything could happen, and I would want it, as long as it is with Logan Ryder.

  I don't know why.

  I just know he possesses some secret power over me, and I cannot resist it.

  One hand now holds me up, a strong forearm barred beneath me, his other hand sliding up my spine, smoothing over skin, up and up, finding my neck, squeezing, massaging, kneading, and then back down. Soothing, yet arousing. I want to relax into him, and yet I want to devour him. My hands, too, seek more, explore, reach, find. Shoulders, hard and round. Ribs, waist. Broad back, hot skin. Up into his hair, under the damp, wavy locks.

  I feel him gather my thick hair into a fist, gripping at the base of my skull, tilt my head back so I'm staring up at him--or I would be were my eyes open--and his kiss plunges me into oblivion. The hold on my hair is delicious. Firm, yet gentle. I cannot break away, should I even want to.

  I do not.

  I wish only to be kissed, and to eagerly press my lips up to his and taste his tongue in my mouth and clutch and cling to the endless maze of muscle and taut flesh.

  How long passes thus? Minutes? Moments? Hours?

  I once read in an old text that a moment is one-fortieth of an hour. Perhaps a million moments pass, and I count each one, sear each moment and stamp each moment onto my mind, into my memory. I do not want to ever forget this experience with Logan, should I get nothing else with him.

  A myriad of moments.

  His hands, both of them once again on my bare bottom, holding, cupping, gently squeezing, then his hand on my cheek, rough, hard, callused, strong, gentle as the sweep of a downy feather across skin. His lips, scouring mine, tilting, nipping, his teeth catching my lip, upper and then lower. The bite of his teeth on my lower lip is a drug, the tug, tug, tug of his teeth an aphrodisiac.

  I feel my lower lip pulled away, feel his breath and his tongue, and I am turned into a wildling.

  I make a sound in my throat, a noise I cannot describe as anything but a growl.

  But then, just when I am contemplating how to reach down between us and free the button on his jeans and grasp his hardness in my hands, Logan sets me down and backs away.

  I am utterly naked, the towel dropped and forgotten.

  A tableau: me, nude, nipples hardening under his ravenous gaze, desire pooling at my core in dripping slick heat, his zipper bulging, a vein in his neck pulsing, fists clenching and releasing, chest heaving, my breasts rising and falling with my own crazed breath. A moment, where I know he is mere moments away from assaulting me, and I would not stop him, would only encourage him and moan for him and beg him for more.

  "Jesus, X." He rubs his jaw with a palm. "You make me fucking crazy." He sounds shaken.

  I cannot stand upright, can only lean weak-kneed back against the wall. "I have to know what you want from me, Logan." The words tumble out unbidden.

  He tilts his head and frowns. "What I want from you?" He kneels, gathers the towel in his hands, presses it to my chest, covering me.

  I am not unaware of a certain reluctance in him as he does so.

  I struggle to stay upright, lock my knees, scrape trembling hands through my hair. "I don't trust myself with you. You make me . . . wild. But my situation, it's not . . . I'm not safe. And I need to know what you want. What's happening. I--I--"

  He moves like lightning, his hands somehow instantly gripping my upper biceps gently, thumbs tracing circles. "You can trust me, X."

  "I want to."

  "But?"

  "But how do I know? I can't even breathe when I'm with you. It doesn't make any sense. I don't recognize myself, and everything is scary enough as it is without feeling like I'm going to--I don't know. Lose myself. I barely have anything to lose, but even that is . . . at risk."

  "I'm not sure I'm following."

  I shake my head, pull out of his grip, pace away. "I'm not making any sense. Which is unlike me."

  He follows me but doesn't grab hold again. "You know, I've noticed something."

  "What's that, Logan?"

  "You are very adept at avoiding talking about yourself."

  I shrug. "There's not much to say about myself." This, at least, is a truth.

  "There's so much to who you are, it's impossible to even know where to start."

  I frown. "You make it seem like I'm complicated."

  "Complexity, thy name is X." He's close to me again, the damp, cool towel the only barrier between our bodies. I can't help but rest my forehead against his chest.

  "That's not true," I protest.

  "Then what's your favorite color?"

  "I don't know."

  "Favorite poet?"

  "E. E. Cummings."

  "Favorite food?" His voice is in my ear. Rumbling, buzzing, intimate and familiar.

  "I don't know."

  "Favorite band?"

  "I don't know." Instinctively, I turn away from the scrutiny of his gaze, except the towel is only loosely draped against my front, so I now bare my back to him. I feel his eyes on me, on the curve of my spine and the swelling bubble of my backside. "I don't know anything about myself, Logan. I don't know. Okay? I'm not complicated, I'm . . . incomplete."

  "Babe. You're complex." His palms skate over my back, both of them moving in soothing circles. "It's not a bad thing. It makes you mysterious. I get the feeling a man could spend a lifetime getting to know you and still not unwrap all your layers."

  "You barely know me."

  "Exactly." A pause. Fingers in my hair, which is still damp. The intimacy of this moment makes my heart ache. "The only name I've got for you is X. I know you're of Spanish descent. I know you work for Caleb Indigo, and you're hard as hell to find, even for one of Caleb's girls. And that is saying something."

  Logan has both of his hands on my hips now, holding me pressed back against him, my spine to his chest, my buttocks curved against the rough scratch of denim. I feel the bulge of his erection behind the zipper. I move just so, and were he naked as well--I inhale sharply and push away that need, that desire, that thought.

  But we are puzzle pieces, he and I. How else might we fit perfectly together?

  I tremble at the possibilities roiling in the dar
k depths of my basest desires.

  "What is your real name?"

  Anger, sudden and hot. "I told you my real name, damn it!" I try to pull away, but he won't let me. For the first time since I've known him, I get a tiny taste of his real strength.

  He holds me in place with his hands on my hips, his grip unbreakable but still gentle and careful.

  He is implacable.

  "The hell it is!" He's angry, too. "You're trying to tell me your real, legal name is Madame X?"

  "Yes!"

  "Bullshit. I can take a lot on faith, honey, but I won't tolerate being lied to, or having the truth kept from me." His voice is a low growl, colder than I thought he could sound. Here is the man who has killed, the man who was once a criminal.

  "I'm not lying." I sound small, and sad, and defeated.

  His hands turn me. Tilt my face up to his. "Then what is your name?"

  "My name is Madame X. I am named after the painting by John Singer Sargent." I shrug away from him, all of my fire tamped and doused now. Something stings my eyes. Something wet. Why am I crying? I don't know. Or maybe there are just too many reasons to choose one.

  I inhale sharply. Square my shoulders. Firm my jaw. Shove down the welter of emotions. Blink until my vision is clear.

  And then I walk away.

  I make it to the entrance of the hallway, trying to wrap the towel around me, needing to be covered now, and then he's moved past me to stand in front of me, blocking my path to the bathroom and his eyes are conflicted, concerned, confused. A broad thumb sweeps over my cheekbone, smearing a tear across my skin. "I believe you."

  "Fortunately for me, my name does not depend on your belief for its existence. Nor do I." There are the claws, out for defense now.

  "Are you one of Caleb's girls?" The question is unexpected, throws me off balance.

  "I don't know what you mean." My voice is carefully modulated into cool neutrality.

  "Of course you don't." He doesn't sound surprised, and he also doesn't sound as if he believes me. He sighs, rubs his face with both hands. "You know what? Let's forget that for the moment. I need food. Will you have lunch with me, Madame X?" He glances at his wrist, at the thick black rubber timepiece there. "Or dinner, I guess it would be, at this point."