Madame X Read online

  You stand up, and you are right in front of me. Your eyes are hard, deep, and swirling with potent venom. "Oh, I think you lie, Madame X. I think they are desired. But . . . I signed the contract, and I'm a man of my word." You resume your seat on the couch and cross your ankles and grin at me. "So. Teach me. I'm ready to learn."

  I walk away from the nugget of truth in your words, breathe slowly, and then turn to you, let my razor-sharp gaze rake over you, let the silence expand. You don't shift, but you begin to show signs of discomfort.

  "Tell me, William. What is your deepest, darkest secret?"

  You are the one to let the silence breathe, this time, and your eyes pierce, and burn. "I'm not sure you really want to know, Madame X."

  "Oh, but I do, William. I wouldn't have asked if I didn't." I take two steps closer to you. "You don't really think you can shock me, do you?"

  You swallow, and blink, and then you let a smile curl your lips. "Fine, but you asked for it. And . . . this is covered under the contract, yes? You can't talk about this to anyone?"

  "I cannot, and I would not." I don't tell you about the cameras, or the microphones.

  "I like it . . . rough," you say. "And I like them . . . unwilling." You eye me, as if to assess the effect of your words.

  I nod. "Go on."

  And you do go on, in ever more graphic detail.

  I've never been so glad of the third stipulation as I am now.

  TWO

  I wake abruptly; I am not alone.

  Expensive cologne, just a hint of it in the air. There are other scents layered beneath the cologne, but they are too faint for me to identify. My bedroom is blackout dark, so there is nothing to see but shadows within shadows. My noise machine shushes, the soothing, gentle crash of waves on a shore.

  Sleep is nearly impossible for me, because of the dreams.

  "Caleb." I keep my voice low, steady.

  There is no answer. I need none, however. I will wait. I sit up, tug the sheet across my chest, tuck it under my arms. The flat sheet--a thousand thread count, softest Egyptian cotton--is my only shield, and it is a thin and flimsy one at best.

  Click. Low amber light washes over me, bathing the room in a dim glow. There, in the Louis XIV armchair in the corner beside my bed, next to the floor-to-ceiling window with its blackout curtain. Tailored black slacks, from a suit. Crisp white shirt, cuff links with two-carat diamond inserts. The collar is unbuttoned. Only one button, just the very uppermost; the concession to the late hour is shocking in its uncharacteristic casualness. No tie. I see it folded, the thinnest end hanging out of an inner pocket of the suit coat, which is draped over the back of the chair.

  Dark eyes fixed on me. Unblinking. Piercing. Steady, cold, unreadable. Yet . . . there is something. Wariness? Something I cannot fathom.

  "Lower the sheet."

  Ah. A slight slur.

  I release the sheet, let it pool around my waist. My nipples harden in the coolness, under the scrutiny of that dark gaze.

  "Kick it away."

  I bend my knee, lift my leg, push the sheet away with my toe. Red silk underwear, bikini cut. I keep my gaze level, my breathing even, do nothing to betray the hammering of my heart, the churn in my belly.

  "To whom do you belong, X?"

  "To you, Caleb." It is the only answer. The only answer there has ever been.

  "What do I want, X?"

  "Me."

  One button, two, three, and then the shirt joins the suit coat, folded neatly on the back of the chair. Shoes, set aside. Socks folded, tucked into a shoe. Trousers, next. The zipper, so slowly. A torture of moments, waiting for the zzzzzzhrip. Waiting for the thin, stretchy cotton of black boxer-briefs to find their resting place atop the trousers, folded in department-store-precise thirds on the cushion.

  I do not look away. I follow each motion, and I keep my expression neutral. The body revealed is a study in classic masculine beauty. A sculpture of perfection carved from flesh. Muscles toned, carefully and exquisitely crafted. A smattering of dark hair on the chest, a trail from flat belly to thick erection. It is a body designed to engender desire in the viewer. And it does. Oh yes, it does. I am not immune.

  The bed dips. Long, thick fingers with neatly manicured nails sweep through my thick black hair, which is loose around my shoulders at the moment. It is never down, unless I am in bed. Otherwise, it is done up in a chignon, or a neat braid pinned in a coil. Never down. The curve of a woman's neck and throat is as exotic and erotic as breasts, when properly displayed; this was an early lesson. A tug of the hand, and my throat is bared, my head pulled back. This roughness is unexpected. I stifle a gasp of surprise. Not fear. I cannot, must not fear. I dare not even allow myself to feel it, much less let it show.

  Lips, nipping and kissing my throat. Wet, slow, ever so slightly clumsy. Those lips, on my cheek. Sour alcohol-laced breath wafts over me. Fingers delve, dig, pierce. I am not ready, but that does not matter. Not now, not in this moment. Perhaps not ever. Momentary discomfort, and then a finger finds my most sensitive bundle of nerves, sweeps across it, and I feel wetness lubricate me, seep through my privates. A gasp, then. A male grunt, as uncharacteristic as the unbuttoned collar and the intoxicated late-night visit.

  A tongue, sweeping across my nipple. Hardness nudging my softness. Penetration. Once, twice, lips on my cheek, my chin, my throat, my breastbone. I am pressed into the mattress by heavy weight, a hand on my hip, a trim waist pressing my thighs apart. I begin to wonder, deep in the recesses of my mind, how long this will last, this face-to-face encounter.

  Not long.

  Hands on my hips, turning me to my stomach. Drawing my hips up, my knees beneath me. A hand fisting in my hair, another on my hip. Hot, hard presence behind me, fingers searching, finding me damp and ready, guiding the thick bare member into me.

  Long, slow, unhurried. Not exactly rough, but sloppy. Not with the usual efficiency and masterful pacing. No, this is a slow rhythm, lazy at first and then building and building and building. I cannot resist the burgeoning within me, the pressure of an impending climax throbbing through me. I dare not release it, however, so I clench my fists and squeeze my eyes shut and focus on containing it, holding it back.

  The pace becomes punishing, then. Closest to rough as it's ever been. But still, even in intoxication, exquisitely masterful. This body was created for sex. Designed to own, to pleasure, to dominate. And I am, all of those things.

  Whether I will it, or no.

  "Now, X. Come for me, right now. Give me your voice." A rasping murmur, low and strong.

  I finally let go with a panting moan at the base of my throat, let the climax burn through me.

  Finished, I am allowed to fall forward. Absence behind me. Faucet running. I am nudged to my back, handed a damp, warm washcloth.

  "Clean yourself."

  I obey, and return the cloth, roll to my side, and let my eyes slide closed. Let my emotions welter, tumble, let the post-orgasmic drowsiness tug me under. Let the deep, powerful riptide of my most private thoughts and fears and desires spin me into a disoriented tumble, far beneath the tumultuous surface of the sea that is consciousness.

  *

  Blood. Sirens. Loss. Confusion. Rain in the darkness, lightning gouging the blackness, thunder throbbing in the distance. Weeping. Alone.

  "X--wake up. Wake up. You're dreaming again." Hands on my waist, lips at my ear, a comforting whisper.

  I bolt upright, sobbing. Hair sticks to my forehead in sweat-smeared tangles. Strands in my mouth. My back is damp with sweat. My arms shake. My heart is hammering.

  "Sshh. Hush. You're okay now."

  I shake my head. I'm not okay. Eyes closed, fighting for breath--I can see nothing but snatches of nightmare:

  Blood, crimson and thick, swirling and mixing with rain on a sidewalk. A pair of eyes, open, vacant and unseeing. Limbs bent at unnatural angles. A stab of lightning, sudden and bright, illuminating the night for the space of a heartbeat. An all-consuming sensation
of horror, terror, the kind of loss that steals your breath and sucks the marrow from your bones.

  Sobs. Wracked, shaking, incapable of speech. I try to push it down, gain control, but I cannot. I can only sob and gasp and tremble, shiver and weep. My lungs ache. I cannot breathe, cannot think, can only see the blood, the blood, scarlet and thick as syrup, arterial, lifeblood leaking away and mixing with rain.

  "X. Breathe. Breathe, okay? Look at me. Look at my eyes." I seek dark eyes, find them strangely warm, concerned.

  "Can't--can't breathe--" I gasp.

  Pulled against a firm, smooth chest. Heartbeat under my ear. I tense; comfort like this is alien. I still cannot breathe, or blink. Paralyzed with fear, with the poison of nightmares in my blood.

  "How did we meet, X?"

  "You--s-s-saved me."

  "That's right. What did I save you from?"

  "Him. Him." I feel a presence from my dream, a malevolence, a hunger for that scarlet lifeblood.

  "I found you on the sidewalk, bleeding to death. You'd been badly hurt. Beaten nearly to death. Savaged almost beyond recognition. I took you in my arms and carried you to the hospital. You'd crawled, alone, dying . . . so far. A mile, almost. They think you knew where the hospital was, and you were trying to get there. But you didn't quite make it."

  "You carried me to the hospital." In reciting the words, I can begin to find my breath.

  "That's right." A pause, a breath. "I brought you in, and they wouldn't let me go back with you, but you had no identification and you were unconscious. I just couldn't leave you alone, not knowing what had happened to you. Not knowing if you'd be okay. So they let me stay in the triage room while they worked on you."

  "You waited for six hours. I died on the table, but they brought me back." I know these words, this story. It is the only history I have.

  "Your head had been badly damaged. Of your many injuries, your cranial injury was the most worrisome, they told me. You might never regain consciousness, they told me. And if you did, you might remember nothing. Or some things but not others. Or everything. Or you might be paralyzed, or have a stroke. With the damage to your brain, there was no way to know until you woke up."

  "And I almost didn't wake up."

  "I had to leave eventually, but I came back the next day, to check on you."

  "And the next, and the next." I know all the beats, all the pauses, where to say my lines. I can breathe. I can work my lungs: inflate, deflate; inhale, exhale. Flex my fingers, blink my eyes, focus on curling my toes. Familiar exercises.

  "The police found the crime scene where you'd been attacked. It was murder. You had a family, but they'd been murdered. And you'd witnessed it. Seen it all. Barely survived."

  "And he's still out there."

  "Waiting for you to show your face. Waiting to make sure you can't ever tell anyone what you know."

  "But I don't know anything. I can't remember anything." This is true. This is a part of the ritual, but it is true.

  "I know that, and you know that. But he doesn't. The murderer is out there, and knows you survived, and knows you saw everything."

  "You'll protect me." Another truth.

  One of very few. I am protected. Provided for. Kept safe.

  Kept.

  "I will protect you. You have to trust me, X. I'll keep you safe, but you have to trust me."

  "I trust you, Caleb." Those four words, I must bite them out. Sometimes, I do not believe them; other times, I do. Tonight is the former.

  It is like eating an orange, trying to separate the seeds from the flesh and spit out the seeds only. There is truth, but also lies. Trust, but something bitter as well, something foul.

  "Good." Fingers in my thick black hair. Smoothing. Petting. "Sleep now."

  Click. Darkness now, a blanket settling over me, the noise machine soothing me with gently crashing waves on an imaginary shore. I let the sound of the waves take me away, like floating away on a tide.

  Distantly, I hear the door open, close.

  I am alone.

  THREE

  The light of dawn brings with it shame. I am weak. I was weak. The nightmares, they sap me of my strength. Turn me into this creature, this soft, vulnerable thing, all underbelly and no armor. Starved for oxygen, starved for light, hungry for touch to remind me that the dreams are only fiction, to remind me that I am safe, I turn to the only comfort I can find.

  The ritual.

  The words.

  The history.

  But in the light of day--showered and dressed, hair braided and twisted into a knot at the back of my head, makeup carefully applied, feet sheathed in expensive heels--garbed in my armor, I am not that mewling kitten, and I despise her. If I could get my claws into that version of myself, I would shred her without mercy, tear her to bits. Shake her until her teeth clack together, give her a taste of the verbal venom I use to keep errant rich boys in line. Tell her a lady does not show fear. A lady does not cry in front of anyone. A lady does not ever show weakness. Chin up, I'd say. Back straight. Find your dignity, put it on like a suit of armor.

  I do those things. Scour myself of emotion. Turn away from the mirror in my walk-in closet, away from the temptation to examine the scars on my belly, my arms, my shoulder, beneath the roots of my hair on the left side of my skull, midway up between the top of my ear and the crown of my head. There are no scars. No reminders of a lost past. No weakness, no nightmares, no need for comfort.

  I am X.

  It is just past five in the morning. I prepare a breakfast of free-range egg whites, hand-ground wheat toast with a thin scrim of organic butter. Slice open a grapefruit, cover half with plastic wrap and return it to the refrigerator, tap a few granules of Truvia onto each wedge of the grapefruit. Black tea, no sugar or milk. Organic vitamin supplements.

  Later, between clients, I will spend an hour on the rowing machine, and then an hour doing yoga. Then there will be lunch: a salad of fresh, organically grown spinach, walnuts, dried cranberries, crumbles of bleu cheese, and a drizzle of vinaigrette, a bowl of fresh fruit sliced and mixed, a bottle of distilled, deionized water. Or, alternatively, a superfoods smoothie, green, bitter, and healthy.

  An extra twenty minutes in the gym, I'd been told. Trim down, that meant. The diet and exercise instruction had come with the packet I received every morning, a large manila envelope slipped under the door, containing the dossiers on my clients for the day and the attendant contracts.

  Timed correctly, there are always a few extra minutes after breakfast and before my first client of the day. I finish breakfast at 5:45 A.M., and my first client arrives at 6:15 A.M.; the earliest slot is reserved for the most difficult of clients, those most in need of a jarring lesson. If you cannot make the early time, you fail the course, and you are charged the termination and grievance fee.

  In the thirty minutes to myself, before William Drake arrives, I stand at the window in the living room, staring down at the bustling streets below. This is my favorite pastime, watching the people scurry here and there, talking on their cell phones, newspapers tucked under business-suit arms, slim pencil dresses slit just so in the back and hugging stockinged legs. I imagine their stories.

  That man, there, in the charcoal suit just a little too loose around the middle, shoulder pads a little too thick, slacks a little long at the heel. Balding, a tea-saucer-sized bare spot at the back of his head. Talking on a cell phone, hand gesturing frantically, angrily, forefinger stabbing the air. Red in the face. He's a struggling businessman, fighting upstream in a cutthroat business. Stocks, maybe. Or law. Corporate law. He's always behind, just barely not making it. A wife, a young son. He's older than his wife by several years, and his son is just starting school. He's old enough that taking care of a child on top of fighting to make it at the firm is a Sisyphean task. His wife married him because she thought their fortunes would improve, a promotion would put them in an easier place, and she needed a green card, maybe. There's affection, but no real love. He's too bu
sy for love, too busy clocking sixty or eighty hours per week trying to make the exorbitant New York City rent. They live in the Bronx, maybe, so she can be nearer to her family, because she needs help. She's probably working a job on the side while her son goes to school, stashing away money unbeknownst to her husband, because she's losing faith in his ability to take care of them. Enough that she could move out and provide for her son if worse came to worst.

  It is a pleasant distraction, focusing on the fictional, normal lives of random people. It allows me to safely wonder what life is like out there, for them. Safely, because to wonder what such a life out there would be like for me? That's dangerous. A threat to my sanity, which depends on a careful balancing act.

  I hear the faint ding of the elevator arriving. I glance at the Venetian-style wall clock: 6:10 A.M.; five minutes early. But a moment or two passes and there is no knock at the door. I move across the room, keeping my heel clicks as silent as possible, and stand by the door, listening.

  "Yeah, I'm almost there," you say, your voice low. "I fucking hate these early-ass appointments. No, my dad makes me go. Some kind of stupid corporate training, basically. Make me a better leader, bullshit like that. Put my ass in line. No, man, it's not like that. I can't really get into it. No, for real, I'm not allowed to talk about it. I signed a contract, and if I fuck this up my dad's going to cut me off totally. After what happened with that slut Yasmin, I'm on real thin ice with him, so I've got to toe the fucking line. . . . Or what? Or he'll basically gut the position of president out of the charter and turn all the power over to the board, which means I won't inherit dick when he retires. He's got the documents drawn up. He showed them to me. No, man, I fucking saw them, okay? It was after he got the judge to let me out on bail. He had to pay a shitload of money to keep the whole thing quiet. Paid Yasmin like half a mil to keep her fat mouth shut about what happened. My plan? My plan is to go along with this training program, keep my dad happy, play the game. I've got friends on the inside, on the board, certain members who are unhappy with where Dad's been taking the company. If I can string things along another year or two, I can probably work a little magic behind the scenes, steal the whole shit show from the old fucker, and I mean pull a real-deal coup d'etat. And as soon as I've got my hands on the company . . . man, I'll be set. I've got plans . . . no, I can't make it out tonight. I've got . . . other plans. . . . No, I let that bitch go, she was a screamer. This is a new one. She's all wrapped up like a sweet little present. She ain't wearing a damn thing except the handcuffs, and I didn't even have to gag her. No, you asshole, you can't help. Last time I let you help, you took it way too fucking far, and I had to pay the slut to keep her from yapping about what your stupid ass did to her. I've told you, there's an art to it. Listen, dude, I'm gonna be late, I've gotta go. The bitch that runs this show doesn't fuck around, I can tell you that much for free. Anyway, for real, I've got to go. And Brady? Stay the fuck away from my place, okay? I'm serious. I'll kill you for fucking real if you go anywhere near her. All right, bye."