Exposed (Madame X, #2)(70)

Our sweat commingles.

Our breathing synchronizes.

I feel complete, for the first time in my life. I need nothing. Nothing but this. Nothing but him. Nothing but us.

And then Logan rolls off me, goes into the bathroom, and returns with a wet warm washcloth. He parts me and cleans me, gently and tenderly. Tosses the cloth into the bathroom and lies beside me.

That act alone means everything to me. The fact that he never looked away from me.

That each moment we just spent together was each of us giving, and thus each of us receiving exactly what we needed.

He climbs into the bed beside me, gathers me in his arms, cradles me against his chest.

I listen to his heartbeat. “Can this be forever?”

“Yes, Isabel. This is our forever.”

“Promise?”

“On my life.”

And that is all I need.





THIRTEEN


Logan is asleep; I am not. I cannot. His digital clock says it is 4:30 in the morning. I should be exhausted. I should be sore. I am sore, but not at all tired. Deliciously sore, perfectly achy. I feel delicate.

On the inside as well as the outside.

I lie on my left side and watch Logan sleep, gaze at the boyish innocence on his face. Absorb the beauty in the slack weight of his muscles as he rests. He’s drooling a little, and I’ve been stifling a giggle at it for an hour and a half now. I half want to wipe it away, but I don’t want to wake him, and it’s just so cute I can’t.

I’m fighting tears. Warring with a maelstrom of emotions. I’m so happy, deliriously happy. Vibrating with joy. Overwhelmed with incredulity.

He loves me. He loves me.

ME.

Logan Ryder told me he loves me.

Tears prick the corners of my eyes as I consider this, as I relive over and over and over the wondrousness of that moment, hearing those words.

But then I think of . . . everything else.

Caleb.

Caleb’s lies.

Caleb’s truths.

The complicated, labyrinthine tapestry he’s woven of truth and lies, and how I’m not sure I’ll ever untangle the two.

How, forty-eight hours ago, a little more now, I was pressed up against the glass of Caleb’s high-rise penthouse window, being f*cked by him from behind.

How I felt that happening, felt him strangling me with his toxic sorcery, his manipulative magic. How I seemed powerless to stop it. I always have the intention of refusing him, denying him, but I never actually am able to, and I do not understand why. What hold has he over me, that I cannot control my own body? What torture have I put Logan through, with this weakness? What kind of future can we have together, if I am so weak?

How can I ever face Caleb again, now that I’ve slept with Logan?

Not slept with—made love to.

I’ve f*cked Caleb. Been f*cked by him. Had sex with him. Been used by him. I’ve never made love to him.

I had sex with two men in a forty-eight-hour time frame. What does that make me?

It doesn’t really mitigate things that I enjoyed it with Logan and did not with Caleb, nor that with Caleb it was . . . not forced, not involuntary, but—I don’t know. I don’t have the words for it. It felt involuntary. It felt like he was forcing me. But he was not holding me down, was not technically raping me. But yet I wasn’t entirely willing, either. I didn’t want to want him. I didn’t want to be used by him.

I don’t want to be his plaything anymore. But whenever he’s around, that’s how things end up.

I belong to Logan. I’ve chosen that, chosen him, chosen to belong to him.

But Caleb feels as if he owns me.

What do I do?

I can’t stay in bed any longer.

I need to move, need to do something. Anything.

I slip out of bed, tug on my underwear and Logan’s VOTE “NO” ON DALEKS T-shirt. Pad out of the bedroom, tiptoeing softly, shut the door behind me. There are four doors in this hallway: the bedroom, the bathroom, Cocoa’s room, and one more. I try the one room I haven’t seen yet: an office, a simple but beautiful dark wooden desk with a large flatscreen desktop computer, stacks of envelopes and papers, file folders, a white mug full of pens. The mug has a stylized bear paw print on it, surrounded by a red ring slashed top and bottom and both sides with vertical lines, like a rifle reticle, I think, and the word Blackwater across the top. There are photographs on the walls showing Logan in combat gear, wearing a featureless black ball cap, an assault rifle hanging by a strap, held casually in one hand, barrel pointed at the ground, his other arm around another man similarly dressed; another photograph shows him in more traditional-looking army fatigues, a camo-print cap on his head, surrounded by half a dozen other men posing in front of a mammoth truck. All the photographs are of him from his combat and military days, in pairs or with groups, smiling. Looking younger, harder, and sharper. There is one photograph, though, that stands out. It’s in a little frame on his desk, all by itself. A tiny picture, smaller than my palm. It’s a much, much younger Logan, barely into his teens, I’d guess, with his arm slung around a Hispanic boy the same age, both of them holding surfboards larger than they are, sporting huge, happy grins. His best friend, the one who was murdered by the drug dealer.

I leave the office; it feels sacrosanct.

Upstairs then.

I pause to stare at the print of the Van Gogh painting on the landing, Starry Night. I feel like I should be moved by this, but I’m not. Or, not as much as I once was. It still has meaning, but it doesn’t cage my heart the way it used to. I wish I knew why.