Madame X - Wilder Jasinda (книги бесплатно без .TXT) 📗

“You’re crazy. I have to go.” I back away.

My hands shake. Something in the deepest shadows of my being rages against each inch of space I put between us, between him and me. Something in the fabric of my being demands that I stay, that I tell him who I am, that I give him what he demands of me.

But that’s impossible.

“Yeah, I am crazy. Not gonna argue with you there. But that has nothing to do with you and me, honey.”

“There is no you and me, and stop calling me ‘honey.’” I don’t dare turn around, don’t dare show him my back. I shuffle backward to the door, reach behind me for the handle.

“Then tell me your name, Cinderella.”

My hand shakes on the door handle. I push the lever down. Pull the spring-loaded weight of the door toward me, never taking my eyes off his. I need to look away, but I cannot. Cannot. I am trapped by his gaze. Ensnared by his warmth, not just physical heat, but some welcoming, enveloping, cocooning, all-consuming warmth in his soul. It heats the ice in me, spreads through the gaping lonely chasms of my being echoing with cold and absence.

“No.” It is a whisper, inaudible over the hammering of my heart. If I give him my name, I will give him all of me.

A name is a thing of power.

“Why not?” Long easy strides carry him to me.

His hands curl around the base of my spine and pull me forward, and the door clicks closed, and I’m up against his chest, breathing in cinnamon and cigarettes. “I’ll tell you mine, then, how about that? My name is Logan Ryder.”

“Logan Ryder . . .” I’m blinking up at him, trying to breathe, my hands flat on his chest, feeling his breath, feeling the thunder of his heartbeat under my right palm. “Hi.”

“And your name is . . . ?” He’s so close, all I can feel and all I can smell and all I can taste, his scent is all-consuming and his heat is all-enveloping, and I cannot give him my name, because it’s all I have to give, currency I dare not spend.

I just shake my head. “I can’t. I can’t.” I back away from him, forcing my legs to obey the prudence of my mind rather than the lust of my heart and body.

“Can I tell you a secret, Cinderella?”

“If you wish.” I’m still struggling to make my lungs operate, and it comes out breathy.

“I have no idea what I’m doing right now.” His fingers dig into the flesh just above my backside, holding me firmly against him.

As if I could move; I’m paralyzed by this sensation. “Me either,” I admit.

He smirks, and one of his hands rises to my face. Cups my cheek. His thumb brushes my cheekbone.

I feel absurdly close to tears, for some inexplicable reason.

“Maybe so, but I’m the one doing this . . .” he breathes,

and kisses me,

and kisses me,

and kisses me.

Or . . . he would have, but I stumble backward in the fragment of a second before his lips touch mine, put just enough distance between us that the kiss is stopped before it can ruin me.

He sighs, a short, small breath of wonder and frustration and desire.

•   •   •

BAM!—BAM! A heavy fist pounds twice on the door, and I jump, stumble backward and away until my spine flattens against the door. I stare at Logan, eyes stinging and lungs aching for air, hands trembling.

I jerk the door open and slip out of it, slam hard against Thomas’s chest.

“Where did you go?” His heavily accented voice is thick as oil, deeper than canyons.

His hands grip my shoulders, set me several feet backward, away from him, turn me around.

“I went into the wrong bathroom by mistake.”

A paw bigger than a bear’s wraps around my upper arm, gently but implacably, and compels me away from the bathroom. “Next time, I go in with you.”

Away, back to the ballroom. Len is there, arms crossed, eyes unhappy. And you, at the bar a few feet away, drinking.

Something is ended, something else begun.

“Madame X. You should pay more attention to which bathroom you go into.” Len’s voice is sharp, light faux-friendliness. “You wouldn’t want me to worry about where you’d gone, now would you?”

“No, my apologies.” I hunt for a suitable explanation. “It was—a female thing. Unexpected. I’m sure you understand.”

Thomas’s hand still around my upper arm, Len in front of me, I fight for breath, for calmness. Pretend the flavor of an almost-kiss does not still linger on my lips. Hope my frantic pulse cannot be heard over the band. I am dizzy.

The milling and talking has ended, and everyone has paired off into couples to dance, a few people along the edges of the crowd, watching, waiting, drinking.

You sweep me away, onto the dance floor, where couples waltz and spin and sway. Your hands are politely placed on my waist and your hand is in mine, warm and dry and loose. You lead with practiced ease, guiding me through one dance, and then another. We pause when the band takes a break, and we sip at wine that I find too light, too fruity, too sweet. And then the band strikes up again, and you lead me back out, fit your hand to my waist, where your touch cannot be misconstrued as anything but platonic. You make small talk, but I let it wash over me without responding, and you seem to expect this, to understand it, carrying on a one-way conversation about—I don’t even know what.

I am not thinking of you.

“Can I cut in?” Oh, his voice. Now sharp and expectant, leaving no room for disobedience.

You do not stand a chance, sweet Jonathan.

Big hard warm strong hands take me, spin me away, and his steps are not as practiced, not as smooth, but powerful and implacable and confident. His hand is not on my waist, not polite, not platonic. His hand is on my hip, cupping me intimately. Not quite inappropriate, but very nearly. Fingers are tangled in mine, rather than clasping like friends.

“Hi,” he says, and indigo eyes find mine.

“Hi,” I breathe back.

And we dance. We sway and sweep in graceful circles, and time is like water, one song passing, and then two, and I cannot look away. Don’t wish to. His eyes search me, and seem to see me. Read me, as if I am a familiar and beloved book, long lost and just now found once again.

“What’s your name, Cinderella?” His forehead touches mine, and I fear the intimacy of the scene, his hand on my hip, his fingers twined with mine, our bodies too close.

I must end this dance.

I pull away.

“Wait!” He catches my hand and pulls me back against him.

We are lost in the crowd of dancers, but I know Len is watching and so is Thomas, and so is Jonathan, and this cannot happen, should not be happening. He is too close. He touches me as if we are framed and fitted and formed to belong one to the other, as if he knows me, as if my body is his for the touching.

“Why won’t you just tell me your fucking name?” He sounds very nearly desperate.

“I can’t.” I know not how else to explain it.

“It’s just a name, sweetheart.”

“It’s not. It’s more than that. It’s who I am.” I want to smile, want to throw myself at him, to taste his lips, to feel the hard heat of his chest and the warmth of his arms. I want to say a million traitorous things.

“Exactly.” His fingers leave my hand and slip and slide up my forearm, and God, his fingertips on the tender underside of my forearm is so intimate and so soft that I can’t breathe and I am aroused by that innocent intimacy, my thighs clenching together as I stare up at him, just his fingertips on my forearm, dragging from wrist up and up to elbow, back down, tracing and tickling. “I want to know who you are.”

My fingers go to my lips, touch them where his lips nearly touched mine. I shake my head. “You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“It’s impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible.”

I have no response for that. I can only tug my arm free, and he cannot do anything but allow it. I walk away, and it hurts, it aches, the pull to look back. The pull to return to him and finish the almost-kiss is like a taut wire speared through my heart, plucked to hum like a harp string. Each step away from Logan makes my whole being sing the song of that plucked string.