“I’m pregnant, remember?” I suddenly don’t want to put on either.
“Babe. You’re not showing at all.” He takes the bikini from me, tosses it into the suitcase. “But don’t worry about it. You’re gorgeous, no matter what you wear or don’t wear. We’re here to relax and get away from all the bullshit, so don’t stress about the bathing suit.”
He kisses me, a quick peck, and then grabs his trunks and moves toward the bathroom, peeling off his T-shirt on the way.
I watch, shamelessly, as he pees, then shucks his jeans and underwear. He does all this in the bathroom, but with the door open, so I’m able to watch in the reflection of the mirror. He turns as he’s pulling up the trunks, just in time for me to watch as certain portions of his anatomy vanish. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of looking at him, I realize.
I strip, tossing my clothes on the bed. Eyes on Logan, his on me. His hands find me, when I’m naked.
“Start that, Logan, and we’ll never get to the beach.”
“It’ll still be there in an hour or two,” he murmurs, palming my ass and kissing me on the jaw.
“True . . .”
And then, somehow, my fingers find the strings of his trunks and are tugging the knot apart, and then he’s naked with me. Pushing me backward to the bed, lifting my knees over his shoulders, mouth to my core.
I writhe off the bed, wrapping my legs around him, pulling him closer. I’m greedy for what his tongue can do to me, and soon I’m riding his tongue and fingers through one orgasm, two . . . I’m nearing a third when I finally manage to pull him away, pull him up, pull him over me, lift my hips to his. We find each other, him sliding inside me smoothly, slowly, as if our bodies were puzzle-made for each other.
As he moves, I kiss his jaw, his cheekbone, his temple. My fingers slide up his face, up the right side, encounter the leather of his eyepatch. I brush it away, toss it aside. Feather kisses up his right cheekbone, to his temple. Over his empty eye socket. Telling him without words that he is beautiful, even thus. Especially thus.
He moves harder when I kiss him like that, so I bring my heels up to my buttocks and lie still, let him move above me, let him have me as he wishes to have me, and I focus my attention on touching and kissing his face, his neck, his shoulders, his jaw, sliding my fingertips over his skin, stubble skritching under my nails.
When I feel his rhythm falter, when I feel him tighten and throb within me, when I feel him surging hard and rough and wild, I press my lips to his ear and whisper his name, again and again and again, and then I whisper I love you in the other ear. I palm his buttocks and urge him to move harder, pull him against me, hook my legs around his back and move against him.
I do not come with him.
I don’t want to.
I want to only feel him, take him.
He has given me so much, loved me so unconditionally, accepted me, forgiven me, taught me to be me.
He comes hard, grunting against my breasts. I carve my fingers through his hair and hold his mouth against my nipple and pull him to my lips and kiss him as he comes, bite his lip and suck his breath into my lungs and cling to his neck and writhe beneath him to milk his orgasm until he’s limp above me, giving me his weight.
“Jesus, Isabel.” He is gasping, still, his face on my chest, between my breasts. I love his weight on me, thus. “You rock my world harder every single time we do that.”
“You haven’t just rocked my world, Logan. You have utterly changed me. You have rescued me.”
“Love don’t quit, baby.”
“No, I’m realizing that it does not.” I move beneath him, and he slides off me, pulls me against his chest, as if to cuddle. I have other ideas. “The beach, Logan. I want to swim.”
I do, very much. The sea is calling to me. I want to feel the sand in my toes, the wind in my hair, the water around my ankles.
“Let’s go, then.”
* * *
I opt for the two-piece. I feel naked, but when I try it on and look in the mirror, even I must admit I look rather stunning. And Logan can’t keep his eyes—or his hands—off me. Thus, the two-piece.
Now we’re standing on the side of the road, waiting to cross. There is a fence between the road and the back of the condominiums, with gates here and there to allow residents and guests to come and go from the beach. A couple of cars pass, and then we cross, dancing through the dune grass and down to the shore. The sand is hot until we reach the water’s edge, and that’s where I stop.
Water lapping at my toes, up to my ankles. Wet sand pulling at my feet, sliding and shifting with the receding waves. The sun is low, sending a path of reddish-gold light on the ocean.
Logan is quiet, holding my hand. Watching me.
I wade slowly deeper, and Logan comes with me.
The memory from earlier is vivid in my mind. It is all I can see, all I can feel. I almost expect to be able to turn and see Mama and Papa on the sand, on Abuela’s blanket, kissing. I turn, in fact. But the beach is empty, except for a few singles and couples drifting along the shore in the distance.
I wade in deeper. To my thighs, to my hips. The water is cool at my waist.
“I always used to stop here. This deep. I had to work up the courage to jump in.” I blink; salt stings my eyes. “Papa would sometimes push me in, if I was taking too long.”
“Like this?” Logan says.
And then wraps his arm around my waist and throws us into the water. I come up spluttering, but laughing.
“Yes, Logan. Exactly like that.”
And now that I’m in the water, I’m home. More than anywhere I’ve ever been since waking up from the coma, I’m home. I dive back under, down to the sea floor, trailing my fingers along the rippled sand. Kick hard, draw at the water with cupped palms, swim long and hard until my lungs burn, and then I plant my heels in the sand and kick off. I break the surface, roll to my back, and drift on the waves. The sea is calm, gently rolling. I feel Logan beside me. Just watching. There, but silent. Giving me this moment.
I float for a while, eyes closed, remnants of the sun’s heat bathing my face.
I drop my feet to the sea floor and turn to face Logan. “Thank you, Logan.”
He’s left his eyepatch in the condo, but, in this moment at least, I can look at him without feeling the squirm of guilt.
“For what, babe?” he asks.
I push up against him. Kiss him. “This.” I gesture around us. “For bringing me here. I feel . . . at home. At peace.”
“Good. That’s what I wanted.”
“How can I ever thank you? It seems impossible.” I run my hands over his wet hair. “You’ve given me so much. Done so much.”
“That’s love, honey. It’s life. It’s . . .” He shrugs, at a loss for words. “All you have to do is love me back.”
“I do. Very much. I never thought to even wonder what that was, that it even existed, until I met you. I knew only one thing, and that seemed to be all there was in life. And you’ve shown me so much in such a short span of time.” I kiss him, taste brine on his lips. “I remember . . . from earlier, my memory of being on the beach with Mama and Papa, I remember how they couldn’t seem to stop touching each other, kissing each other. They kissed like they never wanted to stop. And I remember this thought, wondering what it would be like, kissing someone and wanting to never stop.”
Logan cups the back of my head and kisses me senseless. Tongues tangling, our lips and teeth colliding, his hand pulling me closer, stealing my breath. A moment of surprise, and then I kiss him back, and it lasts for an eternity. We stand in the water, in the path of light spread by the crimson sunset, kissing as my parents once kissed, as if there were nothing else in all the world but the kiss. As if the kiss were all.
“Never stop, Isabel.” Logan’s whisper is soft and sweet. “Please, never stop.”
TEN
We spend a week in Barcelona. We swim, we make love, we sleep tangled around each other. We live free, soaking up the sun, bathing in love.
It is the happiest I have ever been.
The happiest I will ever be, I think.
ELEVEN
I have almost managed to forget about you.
Almost.
We have moved, Logan and I. He sold his row house, and we spent a month hunting for something that suited us. We looked at other row houses, other brownstones. We looked at condos, ground-floor apartments, penthouses. I expected us to choose something like Logan had, something quiet and private with a backyard. Instead, however, we chose the penthouse of a condo building in the heart of Greenwich Village. The entire upper floor, with a private rooftop terrace. It is nothing like the echoing monstrosity of your home, a fact that I love, smaller and cozier than that, yet larger than Logan’s previous place. A beautiful kitchen flowing into an informal dining area, a breakfast nook tucked into a corner. The living room is sunken a few steps down from the kitchen and bedrooms, which strikes me as odd, but I find I like it, for reasons I can’t quite enumerate. There are four bedrooms; one for Logan and me, one as his home office, one to be a nursery—that still makes my hands shake and my stomach flip, because it isn’t real yet, and is still terrifying—and one for Cocoa. The master bedroom has an en suite bathroom, and there is one more shared between the other three bedrooms. The master bedroom is isolated, set above the rest of the unit so it overlooks the rooftop terrace. The front of the room is a wall of movable, adjustable-tint glass, which leads to a balcony that in turn descends via twin curving staircases to the terrace.
Cocoa loves the terrace almost as much as I do. As soon as we let her out, she runs laps around the perimeter for a few minutes, barking like a fiend, and then puts her front paws up on the ledge of the waist-high wall and stares down at the street, tongue lolling, eyes excitedly scanning the sidewalk below, tail swinging a mile a minute, and that’s where she’ll stay, just like that, until you make her come in.
Logan sells his old place with all the furniture included, both to fetch a higher price and because he wants us to choose everything for our new home together, from silverware to bedsheets. The only things we bring with us are our clothes and the contents of his office; everything else stays. And we spend days, weeks even, picking out curtains and couches, silverware and wineglasses, bedsheets and cooking utensils and everything in between.
I never realized how much stuff it took to make a house a home.
And I savor every moment of it, every decision, down to the smallest, most arbitrary thing. It is normalcy, and it is glorious.
I have decided to put on hold the preparations for Comportment. Even if I do not feel it yet—aside from the change in the foods I like to eat, and the morning sickness—I am pregnant. I have seen a doctor, with Logan, and verified the clinic’s verdict. Took measurements and did an ultrasound, a blood test, all sorts of medical procedures to ensure that I am healthy, and the baby is growing as it should be. It is early yet, but the doctor said all is progressing as it should be. I am taking prenatal vitamins, continuing to exercise and eat healthy.
All this means that trying to get my own business off the ground is not feasible, as yet. Perhaps it never will be. Or perhaps, when I am ready to reexamine the notion of going into business for myself, I will have new ideas, a different business plan. For now, I am content to be Logan’s girlfriend, to live in our own home that we chose for ourselves. To run, and watch movies with Logan, and make love with him in every room, on every surface both vertical and horizontal.
Thus, learning to live life as a normal woman, I manage to nearly forget about you.
To forget the questions.
The doubts.
The inconsistencies.
Everything.
It all gets shuffled to the back of my mind, set aside. Not important, now that I am discovering the sweetness of normality.
But, in that inexorable, mysterious way you possess, you appear when least expected, and do something absolutely unpredictable.
Yet, really, when it happens, I am not surprised at all.
It is you, after all:
You kidnap me.
TWELVE
It is rather unnecessarily dramatic, the way you snatch me.
Right off the rooftop terrace, in broad daylight. Just past ten in the morning, in fact.
I am reclined on a lounge chair, my feet up, sunglasses on, clad in a robe and a bikini so revealing I’d never wear it out, only here, at home, for Logan, or alone on the roof. I am reading, sipping herbal tea, enjoying the sunlight of what promises to be one of the last warm days we will have for some time. Cocoa is beside my chair, her chin on my thigh, snoring.
I hear a helicopter, and think nothing of it. This is New York, there are helicopters going overhead all the time. But when the volume of its whumping rotors grows, I become curious. Sit up, look around. Cocoa’s ears prick and twitch, and she too seems disconcerted. Growls deep in her chest. I watch as the hackles on the back of her shoulders lift.
Something is amiss.
I wrap my thin robe around myself and cinch it closed, tie the belt. Set aside my mug. Clutch my cell phone, ready to call Logan if needed.
The rotors are close now, but the aircraft itself is still somewhere out of sight. Cocoa spots it first, and barks at it. But not the bark she has for another dog, or strangers, or squirrels, or birds. This is her fierce, defensive bark, frightening and feral. The helicopter is swooping low over the rooftops, moving fast. Too fast. News and medical helicopters, even the few police ones I’ve seen, none of them have flown thus, barely clearing rooftops, scudding with precise and unerring speed toward this rooftop.
And I know.
I am in motion as soon as I realize who is in that machine, but it is too late.
The helicopter flares to a stop barely a dozen feet overhead, the down-blast of the rotors nearly flattening me. A door slides open, and two ropes drop to the rooftop. Cocoa is a brown blur of fury, moving to stand in front of me, teeth bared in a snarling rictus. Black-clad figures slide down the ropes, and one levels a handgun of some sort, aims it. There is a quiet thump, and Cocoa whines, collapses. I cry out, grab for her, find a dart protruding from her neck. Hands grab me. I fight, thrash.
A gloved hand goes over my mouth, silencing my scream before it can leave me. The hand is replaced by a gag, a length of cloth tugged between my mandibles and tied tight.
My cell phone is tossed aside.
I am lifted off the ground. My hands are wrenched behind my back, and something hard is wrapped around them with a zzzzzhhhhrrrrippp, binding them painfully together. My vision is obscured suddenly, something thick and black draped over my head. A black bag, or a pillowcase, something totally opaque.
Terror claws at my heart.
More ropes are tied around me, but this time in a kind of impromptu harness, under my armpits, around my thighs near my groin on both sides, back up around my armpits, low around my waist beneath my belly, again and again in a swiftly and expertly woven pattern that assures there is no pressure on any one part of my body as I am hoisted off the rooftop. Up, up, up. I am glad in that moment for the bag making it so I cannot see myself being lifted off the ground.
I dangle and sway in the air as I am brought up and up. Hands grab me, pull me in, set me down. Untie the rope harness. Sit me down, and buckle me in, a five-point harness, click-click—click—click-click, all centered over my torso.
The noise of the rotors is deafening.
Perhaps thirty seconds have passed, total, since the
aircraft halted to hover above me.
No one speaks. A door closes and the noise of the rotors is quieter. I feel the helicopter resume forward motion, and then it is banking. Even without the use of my eyes, I can tell that we are moving with horrifying speed through the canyons of the city.
I am still wearing my sunglasses, I realize. It is an odd thing to notice in such a situation. But it just reinforces the speed and precision of the snatch.
Perhaps twenty minutes of flight, at most, and then I feel forward motion become downward motion. I feel touchdown, a gentle bump. My harness is unfastened, hands lift me and set me to my feet. Hands guide me across what I guess may be another rooftop and through a doorway. I hear a door close behind me, and the sound of the helicopter is muted.
The hands on my biceps guide me, turning this way and that, and then halt. Elevator sounds. A brief downward journey in the elevator car, the only sound that of my captor’s soft breath. I am nudged forward, and I take three steps. Hear the elevator door close behind me. A sense of wide space, echoing of my breath within the bag, my bare feet shuffling on some kind of cool hard floor.
“Here she is, sir.” A deep, accented male voice. European accent, of some kind. German, possibly. I am not sure.
Then your voice. “Thank you, Kai.”
“Of course, sir.”
“I’ve added a bonus, to ensure that you and your men remain . . . discreet.”
“Discretion is the byword of our business, Mr. Indigo.”
“It had better be. You wouldn’t want me to have to buy your silence through . . . other methods.”
Kai’s voice, behind me, is cold. “That would be unnecessary, and ill advised, sir, even for you.”
“Good-bye, Kai.”
“Auf wiedersehen.” Bootheel-clicks recede.
Silence. I can only breathe through my nose and fight panic and fear, and hope my knees do not give out.
Exiled (A Madame X Novel) Page 15
