My next words are foolish, daring, and so very, very stupid. But I cannot stop them. “And do you still crave me, knowing another man has touched me, Caleb? Do you still crave me, knowing another man has tasted me, touched me, kissed me?”
You spin away with a snarl so feral I wonder if perhaps you truly are an animal in human disguise. You scrape your hands through your hair, stalk away, glance at me with unbridled rage so fierce it frightens me. A rare look into your deepest emotions. You pace with angry, leonine steps to the table containing the decanter of scotch, pour a huge measure, and toss it back in one swallow, hissing at the burn.
“Do not test me, Isabel.”
“Or what?” I ask, my voice calm and quiet, filled with the venom you taught me so well. “Will you beat me? Kill me? Turn me out? What will you do if I continue to test you? You are a hypocrite and a liar, Caleb Indigo. If that’s even your name.” Rage suffuses me. “You crave me, but not me. Not me, Isabel. You crave Madame X, the nameless, identityless woman you created. I was your golem, Caleb. I know this. I see this. You formed me out of clay, baked me in the fires of your controlling and mysterious ways. But now—now the clay and the stone are cracking and falling away, and the true woman beneath the perfectly shaped skin of the golem is emerging, and you hate that. You hate it. Because I’m not the woman you thought I was. Because I am not so completely yours anymore.”
“Such poetry, Isabel. You are very eloquent in your anger.” Your voice is low, thinner and sharper than the blade of an electron splitter.
You move with the slow, precise gestures of a man in complete control of his rage. You are better than useless displays of anger, better than tantrums. You do not hurl the glass to smash on the floor or against the wall. Such a gesture would be satisfying, perhaps, but useless. Petty, and empty. No, you take a moment and merely breathe. I watch your chest swell and contract. I watch your fists clench and loosen. I watch your eyes pierce me, unblinking, staring, and you are utterly inscrutable. I do not know your thoughts. I do not know what moves beneath the surface of your carefully shuttered expression, coiling and diving and not quite breaching the surface.
You are leviathan.
And my rage is the callow fury of a young woman only now learning how to express her emotions.
You stand before me. Stare down at me. “You cannot deny me, Isabel. You walked away, and yet here you are once more. In my home. You tremble. With rage, yes.”
A step closer, and your chest brushes against the tips of my breasts, and even through the fabric of my dress and bra, my nipples respond to your proximity.
“But also, you tremble with desire.” Your lips brush my earlobe. “For me.”
I am stronger than this.
I am stronger than this.
You cup my core with a broad, hard hand. “Your * is wet.” You bite my earlobe, whisper dirty secret truth against the shell of my ear. “For me.”
I am stronger than this.
I am stronger than this.
Your words leach my lungs of air. Your proximity snarls my will and tangles it. You are a sorcerer, and you weave magic of singular purpose: to seduce me.
You slide your hands up my front, grasp my breasts.
Clutch the V of fabric between them.
Slowly, slowly, with exquisite control, you rip my dress open from top to bottom. Unclasp my bra with a single deft flick of your hands. Tear apart my underwear at the seam over my hip, and the scrap of lace tumbles to the floor.
I am gasping for breath, my breasts heaving. My blood thrums as I hunt vainly for the will to resist you.
I sob once, and then your lips are on mine and your hands are lifting me and somehow you’ve shed your sweatpants and shoes and socks and you are utterly naked with me in this echoing space with dawn light battering blindingly upon us, illuminating us, leaving no shadows in which my weakness can be hidden, no darkness that can absorb the stain of my sin.
You press my spine to the coolness of the window glass. Your hands are large and rough and strong on my backside, holding me up, spreading me open for you.
I bite your shoulder as you thrust into me, taste blood as I am filled by you.
As Madame X I was owned by you.
As Isabel, I am fucked by you.
A thrust. A thrust. I sob, and you buck into me. My flesh squeals against the glass. This is agony, this is ecstasy. You move like a machine, hips driving you into me with pistonlike power.
But . . .
There is a void within me now. It was always there, perhaps, but now I feel it most keenly, as you fill me and fail to sate me.
I know your patterns. I know your needs.
You cannot stomach being face-to-face very long. I wait, but it isn’t long before you lower me to the floor, spin me in place and press me to the glass. Not just my hands, but all of me. Breasts smashed flat against the cold glass, thighs, stomach, cheek. Naked, I am pressed against the glass for all the world to see.
I am exposed.
And you are behind me, pushing into me. One hand on my hip, guiding my motions, the other clutching the queue of my braid.