Exposed (Madame X, #2)(72)

You really enjoy that. Pressing my naked body up against the window, taking your pleasure in me while I’m exposed for anyone to see. As if displaying your trophy, your prize, bragging, saying: Look at what is mine, look, and want, and know that you cannot have her.

I cannot count the number of times I’ve been taken by you, pressed that way up against the window, breasts flattened against the cold glass.

Why never face-to-face?

I wondered, but never asked.

It’s like you were always hiding from me. But what were you hiding? There were a couple of times, especially more recently, before I left and found Logan, that I got a glimpse of the man you could be. The man who could perhaps be . . . not gentle, not tender, but very nearly. A man who could almost be intimate. Not merely a conquest-driven sexual dominant, not merely a predator, not merely a primal force of nature. But a man. Not a lover, perhaps, but at least a sexual partner.

I was never your partner. I was your subject. Your possession.

I remember you talking, a few days ago, in your home, about wanting me, about how even when I was a shaved-headed thing, frail and weak and lost, you wanted me. I remember thinking that if I want to truly leave behind Madame X and all that I once was, if I want to assume a new identity, I need to change my appearance.

I don’t give myself time to think about it. I hunt in Logan’s cabinet under his bathroom sink and find what I’m looking for: electric clippers.

My heart is pounding, hammering in my throat. Can I do this? My hands shake.

I click on the clippers, and the bathroom echoes with their humming buzz. My hand vibrates. I grab a fistful of my thick black hair, which when loose hangs to the middle of my spine. Pull it back and gaze at my reflection, try to imagine myself with no hair. I’m almost ten years older than in that photograph I saw on Caleb’s phone. It would be such a drastic change, and part of me rebels against the idea of sliding this device over my scalp, feeling my hair fall away, having no hair at all.

But I need to change. I need to look different. I cannot resemble any longer the creature created by Caleb Indigo.

I fight my breath, blink away tears of I-know-not-what emotion. Bring the clippers closer and closer to my scalp. I feel the teeth whispering against the skin of my forehead.

And then, a mere eyeblink away from contact with my hair, Logan’s hand encircles my wrist and pulls the clippers away. Tugs the device gently but firmly out of my hand.

“Isabel . . . baby . . . what the hell are you doing?”

I swallow. “I—I was—”

“You were about to shave your head?” He sounds almost panicked.

“Yes.”

He tosses the clippers onto the lid of the toilet tank. “Why? I mean . . . god, your hair is so f*cking gorgeous, Is. Why would you shave it all off?”

How honest can I be with Logan? My mouth vomits the truth before I have a chance to really think it through. “I can’t be his creation any longer, Logan. He made me. He invented me. I had no choice in what I wore, how I looked. I was a persona; I was Madame X and she was always perfect. My clothing is all designer gowns, dresses, skirts, blouses. Sexy, but modest. And my underwear, even that was chosen by him, for him. You’ve noticed this before. My hair . . . he had a woman come every few months to trim the ends of my hair, but I wasn’t allowed to cut it. I was given no say in this. She came, she trimmed the ends, and she left. I asked once if she could take a few inches off, and she just ignored me. I have no money of my own, so I cannot buy a new wardrobe. I don’t even have a home. But my hair? I can change that. I can take ownership of that.”

“But why cut it all off?” Logan threads his hands through my hair, the silky locks slipping like water through his fingers. “I would never tell you what to do with your life or your body or anything, but shaving it all off is just . . . it seems a little extreme.”

“In order to operate on me, the surgeons had to shave my hair off. Caleb showed me a picture of me with no hair. I don’t remember this. He says they operated on me and I seemed fine initially, I woke up, remembered myself. But then I started bleeding cranially, my brain started swelling, and they had to put me in a coma. When I woke up from that I’d lost my memory. But that picture? That was me, the last and only photo of me before I lost my identity. That was me as . . . as Isabel, as the Isabel I once was. The Isabel I used to be. And I want to—I don’t know. I want to be her again. I know I’ll never get that back. I’ve had a few minor memories return, but I’ll never get everything back. I know that. But I just . . . I guess I thought by cutting my hair off, I could . . . regain some of who I used to be.”

“I guess that makes sense. You want to identify with who you were. I totally get that. But what if—”

I cut in over him. “It’s not just that. It’s making myself different. Choosing how I look, for me. To be who I want to be. To look how I want to look, not how Caleb made me. That’s what I want, more than anything, I think.”

“And I get that too. But . . . shaving it like that is so extreme. There’s an in-between. A way to change your look drastically without going to that extreme.” He sighs, frowns. “I’ve known a few women who have shaved their heads. And I just . . . I don’t know how to put this without sounding a little like an *. It tends to take away an element of . . . femininity. Not that you can’t be totally woman, all woman without long hair, but to totally shave it off like you were about to . . . I don’t know. I have a friend who owns a fancy, high-end women’s salon. I can take you in to see her and you can get a professional haircut. Go pixie short, even. I just feel like if you shaved it on a whim, you might regret it. And that’s not something you can undo.”