Exiled (A Madame X Novel) Read online

  “Sure thing, boss.” She seems to be at a loss for words, so she takes the box of bags back and moves into Logan’s room.

  Plastic crinkles as clothes are stuffed into the bags, out of sight. Logan takes my hand and leads me into the living room. Collapses backward onto the couch, taking me with him. I squeal with laughter as he falls, his arms wrapped around me, taking me down to the couch. Twists with me, so I’m between the back of the couch and his big hard body, my cheek on his chest, his hands possessively cupping my backside.

  I can take it for a few moments, and then I get antsy. “Logan. Let go. We should help Beth. Or, I should, at least.”

  “Nope.”

  “Logan—”

  “I’m paying her time and a half for this. And she works best alone. Time to rest.”

  He’s got me pinned. And it’s warm here. Comfy. I’m content, drifting. It’s impossible not to let myself float away, to pretend, once more, that Logan is all that exists. That this time with him is all there is.

  I drowse, doze.

  Sink under the warm buzzing swell of sleep, in Logan’s arms.

  * * *

  I wake up, and Logan is gone.

  Evening light streams through the sliding glass door, deep golden, bathing me in warmth. I roll, and my hand flops over the side of the couch; something wet touches my fingers, and I make a startled noise in my throat. A brown nose appears, followed by whiskers, liquid brown eyes, floppy ears. Cocoa. Before I can even register her presence, she’s licking me.

  “Yes, oh my God, Cocoa, yes. Hi. Yes, girl, I love you too.” I stop her from licking me but don’t push her away.

  She rests her chin on the edge of the couch and just looks at me. As if she sees into my soul and does not find me wanting. The innocent, complete love of a dog is such a wonderful thing.

  I nuzzle against her, rub her ears, her soft fine fur.

  “What do I do, Cocoa? Huh? It’s all so impossible,” I murmur against her neck. “There’s no end. There’s no way out. But he needs me, you know? And I need him. But then, there will always be Caleb. And now Jakob? How do I reconcile the two? There’s no way. And I might never get another glimpse at Jakob. Because, really, I feel like they’re two different people, Caleb and Jakob. But Jakob, he’s a part of Caleb that he keeps buried way down deep. So deep I don’t think that part of him will ever come out again. Which is sad, because that’s a part of Caleb that I could have maybe—no. No. I can’t go there. Can’t think that way.”

  Cocoa whines, yips gently, head tilted to one side. As if to say, Yes, I’m listening.

  I lower my voice to a whisper so quiet it is nearly inaudible even to me, nearly subvocalization. “I love Logan, Cocoa. So much. I really, really do. So . . . how did I let that happen, again, with Caleb? How can I be that weak? I hate myself for it.” Yip, ruff, yip, Cocoa talking back to me. “Will he forgive me? I don’t know. I want to believe he will, but . . . I don’t know. Do I even deserve it?”

  A doorknob twists somewhere, and I sit up. Logan, a towel wrapped around his waist, emerges from the bathroom. Bandaged, but otherwise incredible. Lean, sharp, gorgeous. “Talking to the dog?”

  I smile and nuzzle Cocoa, who pants a couple of times and then licks me once before trotting over to Logan. “Yes. She’s an excellent listener.”

  “Isn’t she? Never argues, never gives shitty advice.”

  “Exactly.”

  I glance at him, frowning. “You’re not supposed to take showers, Logan. You can’t get your dressing wet.”

  He waves a hand in dismissal. “I didn’t shower; I took a bath. Didn’t get my dressing wet. My hair is gonna be greasy until I can take a normal shower, but I needed to feel clean. Don’t worry about it.”

  “Of course I’m going to worry about it.”

  He seems about to argue but then takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, and smiles at me. “I know you are, and I’m grateful that you care enough to worry.”

  “I care so much it scares me sometimes, Logan.” I gesture at his hair. “See, if you’d let me help you, I could have washed your hair without getting the bandage wet.”

  “Next time, then. I’m just . . . I’m not used to asking for help in anything. It’ll take time, that’s all.” There’s a moment of silence, and then he reaches down and rubs Cocoa’s ears. “I didn’t hear what you were saying to her, by the way.” He’s telepathic, apparently. “I just heard Cocoa making that noise she makes when she’s talking back to someone. I swear she understands what we’re saying, you know?”

  “I do. It did seem that way.”

  I want to run my hands over his body. Taste his skin. Feel his muscles under my palms. Take his hardness into my hands, feel him love me the way only he can. I don’t move, though. I can’t do that to him. I don’t deserve that with him. Not anymore. Not until I’ve come clean, admitted my sins and begged him to forgive me, if he can, for betraying him, cheating on him. That’s what it was, betrayal, infidelity. I love Logan. Only Logan.

  But I am an addict. Weak, hooked, unable to control myself.

  Logan must see or sense my inner turmoil. He grips the towel and moves to kneel beside me. “Hey. What’s up?”

  I shrug. “It’s just a lot.”

  “What is?”

  I laugh, a bitter, humorless sound. “Everything, Logan. My life. Just . . . everything.”

  He sweeps a palm across my cheek. “Talk to me, Isabel.”

  I shake my head. “Why? The last thing you need right now is to take on my stick-in-the-mud angst. You need to rest. To heal. Not to worry about me. I should be worrying about you.”

  He blows out a breath. “Isabel, why don’t you get this? I am going to worry about you. I am going to care about your problems. They’re my problems, because I want them to be. It’s what you do when you’re in a relationship.”

  In a relationship. My gut lurches. “I don’t know how to do that. How to be . . . that.”

  “Who does? You make it up as you go, babe.”

  “You make it sound easy.”

  “Not easy, but simple. You trust me, I trust you. We confide in each other. Depend on each other. Give freely so we’re both getting what we need.”

  “That sounds . . . lovely.”

  He’s close. One knee on the couch, near my hip. Staring down at me. Indigo eyes warm, inviting, fiery with desire. God, those eyes. That look. The expression that says he wants me, all of me, only me. Needs me. Can’t go another minute without me, without tasting me, feeling me.

  I take a breath to unburden myself of the guilt, but he steals it with a kiss. Buries his palm in my hair, cupping the back of my head. Lifting me up into the kiss. Grabbing a handful of hair at the roots and tugging my head gently but firmly backward so he can plunder my mouth. Leaning farther over me.

  I can’t not touch him, when he kisses me like this. Smooth my hands over his sides. Roam the curves of his shoulders, the broad plain of his back. Somehow, the towel comes loose. I find myself brushing it away, cupping, gripping, clutching, scratching his backside. Pulling him closer. Feeling him harden between us.

  He’s propping himself up with one hand, searching for the hem of my dress with the other. Tugging it up, out of the way. Probing with a finger, sliding it under the gusset of my panties. Finding me wet. Hot. Ready. Touching and touching and touching, until I’m gasping against his kiss and stroking his hardness. Lifting my hips, needing him. Ready for him. Eager. Hungry.

  He’s ripping at my panties, and I’ve got him gripped in my fist. I can feel by the tension in his belly and the way he’s breathing that he’s ready. Beyond ready.

  “Is . . . God, Isabel.” He murmurs in my ear. His voice is low and rough, but it blasts me with remembrance.

  “Logan, wait.”

  He touches his forehead to my chest for a brief moment, but then he’s leanin
g back, upright. Cock jutting hard and ready, eyes tortured with need. “What do you need, babe?” He stares down at me. “If you’re worried about me, don’t. I’m perfectly healthy enough for this, I promise.”

  “It’s not that, Logan.” I close my eyes tight, summon courage.

  “Then what?”

  I can’t look at him, or I’ll forget it all. The desire to obliterate everything with the heat of his kiss and the hardness of his body and the glory of feeling him orgasm in and on and all over me is too strong. If I look at him thus, naked, hard, ready, I’ll forget what I need to do.

  “Isabel?” Logan’s voice, prompting me.

  I suck in a breath. “We can’t do this, yet. I want to, need to, but I can’t.”

  He shifts, plops to the cushion beside me. Drapes the towel over his lap. It tents, somewhat comically, over his massive erection. I force my eyes to focus on his face.

  He sees now. This . . . isn’t good.

  “Shit.” A breath, a palm passed over his face. “Spill.”

  “I don’t even . . . I don’t know where to start.”

  He eyes me. There’s an anger and a hardness in his gaze. “Well, then let me venture a guess: Caleb mind-fucked you again. Got you all mixed up and feeling sorry for yourself or for him, or something. Worked whatever magic hold he has on you, got you to sleep with him again. Is that it? That’s it, isn’t it? You let Caleb fuck you again.”

  “Logan, I—”

  “Yes—or—no, Isabel?”

  A tear slides down my cheek. Another. A whole host. “Yes.” A broken sound, a shattered word, a shredded syllable.

  “Fuck.” He rises, paces away, towel dropping to the floor, forgotten. Stomps angrily to his room. Pauses, head hanging, glances back at me. And then slams his fist into his bedroom door, a furious smashing blow that splinters the door. “Now I need two goddamn doors.”

  “Logan, wait.”

  “Just give me a few minutes, okay? I need to calm down, and I need to process this.” He’s not looking at me. Just standing naked in the doorway, blood on his knuckles, bandages diagonal across his head. “Don’t leave. Don’t drink. Just . . . wait.”

  “All right.”

  I try to push down the panic. The sobs. The self-loathing. But it’s bubbling up and threatening to spill over. It’s a very long time before Logan emerges. He’s dressed, in loose track pants and a tight T-shirt, barefoot. Band-Aids on his knuckles.

  Takes a seat on the couch beside me. Breathes deeply, lets it out, and finally looks at me. I keep my eyes downcast. I don’t deserve to look at him.

  “Is. Look at me.”

  I shake my head. I can’t. Don’t. Won’t.

  He touches my chin, but I resist. Pull away. Feel his fingers slide across my cheek, brushing away tears. “Isabel de la Vega. Look at me now, please.”

  I have to, the way he says it. The whip and crack of command in his voice is inexorable. “What, Logan?”

  “I hate the hooks he has in you. The way he’s brainwashed you.”

  “It’s addiction, Logan. Pure and simple.”

  “Addiction can be broken.”

  “He’s not a substance I can merely stop buying. I can’t just suffer the withdrawals, or go to rehab, or a clinic. I can’t just quit him. It’s not that simple. He holds my past. He is my past. I hate it, too, the way he affects me. The way I can’t seem to . . . not. No matter how badly I want to, no matter how hard I try.”

  “What was it this time?”

  “Jakob.”

  “So what I told you, you already knew?”

  “Some of it. I confronted him about the name on my discharge papers. And he told me about Jakob. But he told it as if it were someone else. Not him. The last thing he said to me was that Jakob Kasparek does not exist anymore. That his name was Caleb. But then . . . he . . . he showed me that Jakob does exist. Almost as a separate person within him, but there, nonetheless.”

  “Excuse me if that doesn’t move me.”

  “I’m not expecting it to.” I wipe at my face. “I don’t expect . . . anything from you. Except a good-bye, perhaps.”

  “No, Isabel. No. Not that. Never that.”

  “Why? How?”

  “Love is not so weak as that, Isabel. At least mine isn’t.”

  “But mine is, apparently.”

  “I didn’t say so,” Logan says.

  “You didn’t have to.” I finally look at him of my own volition. It is so hard, nearly impossible, and painful. To see the anger and the pain directed at me . . . it is nearly too much to bear. “I hate myself for it, Logan. Truly, I do. The moment he left, I—I wanted to undo it.”

  What I don’t tell him, what I don’t even allow myself to fully think, is that there is a seed of doubt buried deep within me. Now that I’ve seen such a secret, vulnerable, human side of you, I cannot help but wonder what else there is within you, that no one else has ever seen. I wonder. I doubt myself. I doubt everything.

  And that doubt is murderous. Treacherous.

  But I do not doubt Logan. I do not doubt my feelings for him.

  I twist to face him. Take his hands in mine. Meet his eyes. “Logan, please . . . forgive me. If you can. I don’t know what this means for us, for the future, but . . . I do love you. I hope you don’t doubt that.”

  “It’s hard not to. I want to believe that if you loved me enough, you wouldn’t let anything come between us. But then I tell myself that I’m not in your shoes. I can’t understand or fathom what you’ve been through. But what I keep coming back to is . . . this isn’t the first time you’ve gone back to him after promising you were done. It’s not even the second. And—he’s still out there. He still considers you his property, and he’ll come for you. And I—I can’t help being afraid, especially now, that you might just choose him over me if it came down to it.” He touches his lips to my knuckles, all ten, one at a time, slowly. “So, yes. I forgive you. Of course I do. But it will take time. I just . . . I need time. Stay here with me. Just be with me. And give me time to process it all.”

  “I swear I—”

  “Don’t. No promises, Isabel. You can’t make any promises to me, not about Caleb.”

  He’s right, and I know it. I know it, and I hate it.

  I cry, and he doesn’t shush me. Doesn’t tell me to stop. Doesn’t tell me it’s okay. It’s not, and we both know it. But he does hold me. He wraps his arms around me, pulls me against his chest, and lets me cry.

  Sometimes it’s all there is, to cry and know it’s not okay.

  FIVE

  We spend a week in an odd domestic stasis. Eating. Sleeping—together, but not sleeping together. He doesn’t touch me with sexual intent and I do not attempt to instigate it either. We both know we need time between you and me and Logan and me. We go grocery shopping. We pick out a new TV and new bedside table lamps. I accompany Logan to work and act as a sort of personal assistant, out of boredom and a desire to be useful. We go to dinner at restaurants, both fancy and plain.

  He takes me shopping, and for the first time in my memory, I get to choose my own wardrobe. Bras, underwear, jeans, T-shirts, sweaters, skirts, simple cotton dresses, tennis shoes, sandals, flats, socks, tights, leggings, sweatshirts, shorts, workout gear. A whole new wardrobe of simple, attractive, comfortable clothes. He expresses his opinion on certain items, which ones he likes and which he doesn’t, but leaves every decision up to me. Nothing is excessively expensive, nothing is formal or uncomfortable. They are clothes that reflect me, and it’s a gift from Logan the value of which I don’t think he or anyone can fathom. Just choosing my own wardrobe, it makes me feel like a real person, like a woman with her own identity. I have a style, and it is utterly and solely my own. And Logan expects nothing in return. That in itself is wonderful and amazing, to be given something freely. Always before, I felt like everything I did,
everything I had came with a price, physical or emotional or psychological. Logan is content with a simple “thank you” and the happiness so evident in me.

  He takes me to a movie at a theater—a wonderful first for me, an experience I want to repeat as often as possible. It is rapturous, transporting me into a world where I do not exist. A pleasing escape.

  We take Cocoa for long meandering walks through Logan’s neighborhood.

  Logan writes up a business plan for me. Comportment, he calls the business. I’m not sold on the name, but it will do for now. He guides me in constructing a business vision and a mission statement. All businesses need those two things, he says. We scout for locations; he writes up the loan contract; we squabble about both.

  We go to an outpatient doctor to have the pressure bandage removed and the area checked. It’s healing nicely, we’re told. Wash it gently with warm water, don’t rub it too much. Leaking tears are normal, and so is a little blood in the tears. Logan refuses the prosthetics offered, both temporary and permanent. Not the way he wants to go. Not going to pretend to have an eye.

  Beth has come by a few times over the last week with patches—leather, silk, combinations of materials, plain, ornate, and everything in between. Logan sorts through them, discarding some and keeping others.

  He vanishes into the bathroom at the doctor’s office and emerges wearing a patch that, to me, suits him perfectly. It is made from thick, aged brown leather, hand tooled with ornate swirling designs, the rim of the patch itself lined with brass rivets.