Page 90 of Madame X

I feel the pull. An invisible thread, ensnaring my wrist. My ankle. My waist. My throat. It isn’t a scent, or a memory, or a touch. It isn’t sorcery.

I lost twenty years of memory. I lost all I was. I lost me.

But now I have a past. Six years, perhaps only a fraction when compared to the totality of my life, but it is the only history I know. The library. The window. Tea. The way time passes in lulling increments, each moment ordered and known and understood.

Logan... he represents the unknown, a future thatcouldbe. A dream. A dog to nuzzle my cheek, to welcome me. Kisses in the madness of wild moments, passion that consumes. Disorder, frenzy of need, time like sand slipping through a clenched fist, so many new things.

But then there’s Caleb... my savior, my past, and my present. I’ve gotten a glimpse, rare and precious, past heaven-high walls and into the inner sanctum of who the man really is.

Caleb has given me so much... a name, an identity, a life.

He is a mystery, and often inscrutable, but he is all I know.

I choke on my breath.

I feel my foot slide backward.

Logan’s eyes distort, and his jaw clenches. He sees the infinitesimal slide of my foot, and he correctly reads the sign for what it is. “Don’t, X.”

“I’m sorry, Logan.”

“Don’t.You don’t know what you’re doing.” He sounds utterly sure of this.

“I’m sorry. Thank you, Logan. So much. Thank you.”

Caleb stands waiting, watching, tall and broad and clad impeccably in a tailored suit, navy with narrow pinstripes, white shirt, thin slate-gray tie. Fingers uncurl from a fist, palm lifted, hand extended. “Come now.”

I cannot make myself break my gaze away from Logan’s, away from the sadness, the need. He too sees me.

I back away. Back away.

Logan lifts his chin, jaw hardened, fists at his sides, brow furrowed. Faded jeans, a pale green henley, four buttons at the neck, each one undone, sleeves pushed up around thick, corded forearms. I see his hands—and for a moment, only those hands. They touched me, so gently. I felt a lifetime of touch in what in this moment feel like were stolen moments.

A moment is a fortieth of an hour.

How many fortieths of an hour did I steal with Logan?

They do feel stolen, indeed, but no less precious for that.

Hands, on my shoulders, pulling me back. Fingers that know me, fingers that have peeled away all my layers, night after night, and have known me in the darkness and known me in the light.

I still do not turn away, do not look away, even as I retreat into the shadows around the waiting car.

The interior is cool, and silent.

Dark.

Logan stands in a pool of pale light, framed, illuminated. He watches me and does not blink.

I watch, still, even when Len closes the door, and I must watch through tinted glass.

A low, powerful growl of the engine, and then Logan is behind me, still watching, growing smaller.

A long, deep, fraught silence, as the car returns me to the familiar glass-and-steel canyons, echoing with the ceaseless life of night in this city.

When you speak, your voice strikes chords within me, hammers on the strings of a piano. My entire being hums, and I must turn, must look. Must meet your eyes like darkness of a moonless night.

“You are Madame X, and you... are...mine.” Your fingers pinch my chin, tilt my head to look at you. “Say it, X.”