Page 48 of Madame X

“There is no you and me, and stop calling me ‘honey.’” I don’t dare turn around, don’t dare show him my back. I shuffle backward to the door, reach behind me for the handle.

“Then tell me your name, Cinderella.”

My hand shakes on the door handle. I push the lever down. Pull the spring-loaded weight of the door toward me, never taking my eyes off his. I need to look away, but I cannot. Cannot. I am trapped by his gaze. Ensnared by his warmth, not just physical heat, but some welcoming, enveloping, cocooning, all-consuming warmth in his soul. It heats the ice in me, spreads through the gaping lonely chasms of my being echoing with cold and absence.

“No.” It is a whisper, inaudible over the hammering of my heart. If I give him my name, I will give him all of me.

A name is a thing of power.

“Why not?” Long easy strides carry him to me.

His hands curl around the base of my spine and pull me forward, and the doorclicksclosed, and I’m up against his chest, breathing in cinnamon and cigarettes. “I’ll tell you mine, then, how about that? My name is Logan Ryder.”

“Logan Ryder...” I’m blinking up at him, trying to breathe, my hands flat on his chest, feeling his breath, feeling the thunder of his heartbeat under my right palm. “Hi.”

“And your name is... ?” He’s so close, all I can feel and all I can smell and all I can taste, his scent is all-consuming and his heat is all-enveloping, and I cannot give him my name, because it’s all I have to give, currency I dare not spend.

I just shake my head. “I can’t. I can’t.” I back away from him, forcing my legs to obey the prudence of my mind rather than the lust of my heart and body.

“Can I tell you a secret, Cinderella?”

“If you wish.” I’m still struggling to make my lungs operate, and it comes out breathy.

“I have no idea what I’m doing right now.” His fingers dig into the flesh just above my backside, holding me firmly against him.

As if I could move; I’m paralyzed by this sensation. “Me either,” I admit.

He smirks, and one of his hands rises to my face. Cups my cheek. His thumb brushes my cheekbone.

I feel absurdly close to tears, for some inexplicable reason.

“Maybe so, but I’m the one doing this...” he breathes,

and kisses me,

and kisses me,

and kisses me.

Or... he would have, but I stumble backward in the fragment of a second before his lips touch mine, put just enough distance between us that the kiss is stopped before it can ruin me.

He sighs, a short, small, breath of wonder and frustration and desire.

BAM!—BAM!A heavy fist pounds twice on the door, and I jump, stumble backward and away until my spine flattensagainst the door. I stare at Logan, eyes stinging and lungs aching for air, hands trembling.

I jerk the door open and slip out of it, slam hard against Thomas’s chest.

“Where did you go?” His heavily accented voice is thick as oil, deeper than canyons.

His hands grip my shoulders, set me several feet backward, away from him, turn me around.

“I went into the wrong bathroom by mistake.”

A paw bigger than a bear’s wraps around my upper arm, gently but implacably, and compels me away from the bathroom. “Next time, I go in with you.”

Away, back to the ballroom. Len is there, arms crossed, eyes unhappy. And you, at the bar a few feet away, drinking.

Something is ended, something else begun.