Exposed (Madame X, #2)(69)

Sustained eye contact with another person is very hard. The mind, the soul, they want to look away after a while. To meet someone’s gaze without looking away, without flinching, even allowing natural blinks, to just stare into them and receive the stare in return, it is nearly impossible.

Because it is too intimate. It is to bare one’s very soul, one’s vulnerable heart.

I give Logan every corner of me, I don’t look away, I let him look into me, and I take that same from him. It is a gift.

We move in sync now. We find our rhythm. The music of our bodies uniting is dulcet, palpable. This is what each of us was meant for; we were meant to be this way, together.

“Isabel, god, Isabel.” He sounds as if there is a world of words waiting on the other side of his teeth, and he’s just barely holding it all back.

“Say anything, Logan.”

We move madly now. I am coiled on top of him, legs pulled up beneath me, hips circling, breathing his breath, kissing him now and then, sipping at his lips.

“I love this,” he says. It is ripped out of him, it sounds like.

I bury my face against his neck. “Me too. So much.”

“I feel like I’ve been waiting for this for my whole life.”

“I know. I have been, too,” I say.

“I—” he starts, but breaks off.

I push up so I can look down at him, not daring to break our rhythm. This has been my entire life, I think. There has never been anything but this, but us. Nothing else exists. Only now. Only this heaven.

“Say it, Logan.” I bite his lower lip. Suck it into my mouth. “Say everything in your heart.”

“Scared before battle has nothing on what I’m feeling right now, Is.” He murmurs this against my cheek.

“I know. I feel it in you.”

“If I say it out loud, I’ll never be able to go back.”

“Me neither. I don’t want to go back.”

He sits up and tucks his legs beneath his buttocks, and I wrap my legs around his waist. He cups my bottom and holds me up. Lifts me, lets me fall down to impale him in me. I clutch his shoulders and lift myself up, relax down. This way, he drives up into me so deep it takes my breath away, sends stars bursting behind my eyes, novas of amazed ecstasy detonating inside me.

I surge against him. Drive against him. Cling to him and breathe against his skin and smell him and go wild on him, around him. Let go, let the madness out, growl and whimper and scream as my climax builds with his.

“Logan, god, Logan . . .”

“Isabel. Fuck, oh god.” He bites my earlobe and then speaks to me as we love each other with mad abandon. “If I tell you I love you and then you go back to—if you go back, I’ll break. I’ve survived a lot . . . rebuilt my life more than once. I can’t do it again, not after you. You’re everything to me now. I don’t know how it happened, but I’m f*cking gone for you, baby. I don’t want to take this back, but I’m f*cking scared to goddamn death that I won’t be enough for you, that he’ll still have his f*cking hooks in you, and—” He rhythms his words to his movements.

“Never, Logan,” I cut in. “Never. I won’t do that to you. I won’t go back. I won’t take it back. I’m yours, Logan, please please please believe me. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”

We still move together, and he’s still going somehow, still holding back, some kind of superhuman control keeping him back from the edge until he’s ready to let go.

“Sorry for what?” he asks.

“For going back. For letting—what happened, happen.” Neither of us is willing to say it out loud, not now, not in this moment. I give him all my truth. “I didn’t mean to. And I hated it. Every moment, I hated it. And I hate myself for letting it happen. I was yours then. I was yours from the moment I saw you in that bathroom, from the first time I heard your voice.”

He’s losing it now. His movements are ragged, lurching, and his breath is coming in gasps, and his grip on my buttocks is so strong, so powerful.

I’m there, too, ready to come apart all around him.

He can’t let go, though. I can tell, I can sense it.

I touch my lips to the outer shell of his ear, sunk down on him, fully pierced by him, his cock throbbing inside me, his hands keeping me aloft. I let go, let him hold me, let our joined bodies hold me. I cup his head, feather my fingers through his hair and writhe on him, inhale his scent.

I whisper to him. “I love you, Logan. God, I love you.”

He arches his spine and pushes up into me and his voice rises in a wordless shout of release, and I feel him explode inside me. He flings us over so my back hits the mattress and he’s above me and pushing into me wildly, his mouth on mine, and he’s coming and coming and coming, driving into me so powerfully my breath is stolen. I’m with him, riding this with him, and now I’m coming apart too, and like I promised I clench around him as hard as I can and I scream his name and rake my fingernails down his back.

“Isabel . . . I love you, Isabel.” He says this as he sags against me, his hips moving furiously. “I love you so much. So f*cking much.”

We collapse, I go limp, and he sinks against me, his face on my chest between my breasts, my hands smoothing in gentling patterns on his back, tracing the lines I gouged into his skin, both of us shuddering still.