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

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 dark 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.”

“I—” I am hungry. I’m also afraid of Logan’s many sharply pointed questions. Hunger wins out over caution. “Yes. I suppose I will.”

“Good. You need to get dressed, then, and I need to change.” A moment, then, in which neither of us seems willing to turn away first. Finally, Logan sighs. “I’m sorry, X. I didn’t mean to question you or make you mad. I just . . . there’s a lot I don’t know, and I want—I want to know you.”

I could weep again at the vulnerable sincerity in his voice. “You’re right, you know. I am complicated. But I’m also not. It’s just . . . hard for me to talk about myself. I am unaccustomed to trying, so you’ll have to be forgiving if I’m not always very . . . forthcoming.”

“I’ll do my best to be patient, but you should understand one thing about me: When I find something I want, I go after it, hard.”

I can only swallow hard and wonder how I’m supposed to respond to that. “Okay,” is all I can manage.

“Get dressed, X,” he says, his voice rougher than it’s ever been, “before you discover how much self-control it’s taking to not . . . ravish you senseless.”

“Ravish?” Once again, I sound faint. I am clearly not myself around this man.

“Ravish. You like old books, right? That’s an old-book sort of word. It means—”

“I know what it means.” A little sharper, a little more myself.

“Yet you’re still standing there, basically naked.” He takes a step toward me, and never has a man appeared so primal, so intimidatingly, sexually male as Logan in this moment, his hard, lean, lupine form filling the narrow hallway, naked but for jeans, hands fisted at his sides, head tipped forward so all I can see are sharp cheekbones and fiery eyes. “I had you naked in my arms, X. I could have had you up against the wall. But I didn’t.”

“Why not?” I breathe the question, frozen in place like a deer that’s scented a predator.

“Because you’re not ready. Not for what I want.”

“And what do you want, Logan?”

Another step. Mere molecules separate us, yet again. A breath, and I’d be in his arms, and I know nothing would stop the inevitable, should our flesh touch again.

“Everything, Madame X. I want everything.” He towers over me, my head tipped back so I can look up at him, and our lips are nearly touching, but not quite. “Everything, and then some.”

He’s right.

I’m not ready.

He swivels out of my way, and I let out a shallow breath, one of something very like relief, and push past him. Now I am become Lot’s wife: I turn back, press my spine to the door, and my eyes lock on Logan’s. I fumble for the doorknob, never taking my eyes off Logan’s. Stepping through and shutting the door between us takes every ounce of will I possess, and he does not turn away, does not blink, does not so much as breathe as I put the door between us.

And even then, I sense him there, still, on the other side.

SIXTEEN

He takes me to a tiny Italian place. We walk there, a half hour of walking hand in hand across town.

The streets are wet, the trees dripping scintillating droplets in the golden evening haze. The sun has returned, peeking between clouds and skyscrapers to illuminate everything with a sheen of decadent brilliant light, making everything seem romantic and beautiful and perfect.

I feel no panic at being outside, and it is incredible.

“I love this time of day,” Logan says, apropos of nothing. “Photographers call it the golden hour.”

“It is beautiful,” I say, my heart full of joy at the simple luxury of this moment.

He gestures at the sunlight streaming at us from between the buildings to our left as we cross an intersection. “You know, the Japanese have a word. Komorebi. It means the way sunlight filters through the trees in a forest. I’ve always thought there should be a similar word, something that captures this time of day, in this place. The way the sun is such a perfect gold that you can almost but not quite look directly at it, the way it’s framed by the buildings, shines off the glass, turns everything beautiful.” He looks at me. “So beautiful.”

Is he referring to me? Or to the sunlight, the moment?

We walk on, and I memorize this. His hand in mine, his fingers tangled between my fingers, his thumb rubbing in small circles on the web of skin between my thumb and forefinger. The beauty of the city, the air warm and lush and smelling of fresh rain, the familiar cacophony of New York, freedom, the man beside me.

“There’s another word,” he says, once again breaking the silence. “This one is Sanskrit. Mudita?”—he says it moo-dee-tah—“and it means . . . how do I put it? To take joy in the happiness of someone else. Vicarious happiness.”

I watch him, and wait for him to elaborate.

He glances at me, a smile lighting up his beautiful face. “I’m experiencing mudita? right now, watching you.”

“Really?” I ask.

He nods. “Oh yeah. You’re looking at everything like it’s just the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen.”