Madame X - Wilder Jasinda - Страница 42
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“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 own 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.
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