Madame X - Wilder Jasinda - Страница 57
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In the distance, in the farthest corner of the penthouse, the kitchen, and near it a small eating nook in the corner where two walls of glass merge. You are there, sitting at the table, leaned back in a chair, elegantly casual in blue jeans and a white crew neck T-shirt. A mug in your hands, a rectangular electronic tablet on the table in front of you.
There is a place setting beside you. A saucer and a cup. A plate, with a bagel neatly presented, sliced into halves, one half laid facedown on a just-so angle atop the other. Precise, perfect.
“Come, sit.” Your voice is very far away: The penthouse is enormous; it suits you exactly.
I cross the space hesitantly. If there is anyone in the buildings across the street, they can see me, and I am still naked.
You smile as I approach you, set down your mug of coffee.
You stand. Pull off your plain white T-shirt. Settle it onto my head, tug the neck opening over me, and I feed my arms through the sleeves. Clothed, somewhat, I feel more confident.
I glance at the cup of tea—I can see the tag: Harney & Sons Earl Grey—and the bagel, plain with light cream cheese spread thin. “You knew I’d come.”
Your eyes are still impenetrable, but I am starting to see glimmers of something. Perhaps I am finally learning to read you. Or perhaps you are learning to let me.
“Of course I did,” you say. “You are mine.”
And this, from you, is a truth I cannot deny.
The question is: Do I want to be?
Continue reading for a sneak peek at the second book in the Madame X trilogy . . .
EXPOSED
By
Jasinda Wilder
Coming soon from Berkley Books!
I am drowning in an ocean of darkness. The sky is the sea, dark masses of roiling clouds like waves, spreading in every direction and weighing heavily on me like the titanic bulk of Homer’s wine-dark seas. I lie on my back on the rooftop, leftover heat from the previous day still leaching out of the rough concrete and into my skin through the thin T-shirt that is all I’m wearing.
I want to see the stars, someday. I imagine them like a spray of salt on a black table cloth. Like a handful of diamonds against silk.
There are four small black speakers planted in unobtrusive locations around the rooftop, and music floats from them in serene, soothing waves.
Debussy, you said it was: Clair de Lune. A piano, creating a light and airy atmosphere in this lonely evening.
You’ve left for the evening. Business. Nothing I would enjoy, you claimed. Listen to music, drink wine, you’ll be back and we’ll go somewhere.
Things have changed, but then again, they haven’t, really, have they?
Perhaps I doze.
I sense a presence as I wake up, but I don’t open my eyes. Perhaps your business didn’t take as long as you’d thought. I feel you sit beside me, and your finger touches my hair, smooths it off my forehead.
But then I smell cinnamon and cigarettes.
I crack my eyes open, and it isn’t you.
“Logan.” I whisper it, surprised. “How are you here?”
He shrugs. “Bribes, distraction . . . it wasn’t hard.”
“You shouldn’t be here.”
He fits a cigarette to his mouth, cups his hands around it, and I hear a scrape and a click. Flame bursts orange, briefly, and then the smell of cigarette smoke is pungent and acrid. His cheeks go concave, his chest expands, and then he blows out a white plume from his nostrils. “No, I shouldn’t.”
“Then why are you here?” I sit up, and I’m self-conscious of the fact that all I’m wearing is a thin short white T-shirt, and nothing else.
“I had to talk to you.”
“What is there to say?”
His eyes flick shamelessly over me. A breeze kicks up, and my nipples harden, my skin pebbles. Perhaps it isn’t the wind so much as Logan, though. His eyes, that strange and vivid blue, his proximity, his sudden and unexpected and inexplicable presence on this rooftop, in my life.
“There’s a lot I could say, actually.” His eyes certainly speak volumes.
“Then say it,” I say, and it is a challenge.
Smoke curls up from the cigarette between his fingers. “Caleb, he’s not who you think he is.”
“And you know that, do you? Who he really is?”
“Certain things, yes.” He takes a long drag on the cigarette, holds it in, blows it out through his nose again.
“You sneaked in here to tell me all of Caleb’s secrets?”
He shakes his head, almost angrily, blond hair waving around his shoulders. “No, I didn’t,” he confesses. “You made the wrong choice. You should have stayed with me. We could have had something amazing.”
“There was never a choice, Logan.” It feels a little like a lie.
Another long inhalation, exhaling smoke like a dragon. “After you left with Caleb, I did some digging.”
“What do you mean, digging?” I reach for the bottle of wine, which, ironically, is Malbec.
Pour some, take a sip. I need something to do with my hands, somewhere to look that isn’t Logan.
“I looked around for information on you.” He says it quietly, flicking his thumb across the butt of the cigarette.
“Did you find anything?” I almost don’t want to ask.
A long pause, smoke rising in a thin curl, an occasional drag. I let the silence hang, let it weigh as heavily as the clouds.
“Information is power, you know.” He stabs out his cigarette with a short, angry twist of his wrist. “I want to . . . to blackmail you with this, what I found out. Not tell you unless you come with me. But then I’d be no better than Caleb.”
I digest what he’s insinuating. “You think Caleb knows who I am and isn’t telling me?”
“I think he knows more than he’s told you, yes.” He stands up, unfolding his lean frame, and strides away from me across the rooftop, stopping to put his hands on the waist-high wall separating him from the tumble into space. “Do you remember that day in my house, in the hallway? When I got back from walking Cocoa?”
I swallow hard. “Yes, Logan. I remember.”
I remember too well. It recurs, a dream, a fantasy, memories assaulting me as I bathe, as I try to sleep, lost details of hands and mouths when I wake up.
“You were naked. Every inch of your fucking incredible skin, bare for me. I had you in my arms. I had you, X. I had my hands on you, had you on my lips, on my tongue. I can smell your pussy. I can still taste you, almost. But I let you go. I . . . made you walk away.” He turns, glances at me, at my legs bare under the shirt. As if he can smell me, as if he can see what lies beneath the thin white cotton. “I don’t think you’ll ever understand how much that cost me, to walk away from you. How much self-control that took.”
I shake all over. “Logan, I—”
“You would have let me. If I had pushed you up against the wall and done what I wanted to do to you . . . you would have let me. And you wouldn’t have left, because you’d have wanted more.”
I can’t disagree. “I wasn’t—”
He turns away, resumes staring out at the skyline, continuing as if I hadn’t spoken. “I feel . . . haunted by that. I had you, and I let you go. I’m not haunted by the fact that you’re gone, though, that I let you get away. I’m haunted by the fact that I still know it was the right thing to do. As much as I hate it, as much as it hurts, you aren’t ready for me.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” I stand up now, tug the hem of the shirt down so I’m almost covered. Move, so I’m standing a few feet behind him. “And I thought you said you found something out about me.”
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