Exiled (A Madame X Novel) by Jasinda Wilder

simple, and new. Plain cotton briefs. Comfortable, and not at all attractive; I hadn’t gotten around to changing into anything more fancy yet. This thought too is blasted away as he lowers the undergarment. I step out. And now I’m bare for him, the dress hiked up around my waist.
    “Nothing underneath, tonight.” His voice in my ear is low, a murmur, a growl.
    “What?” I gasp.
    “No panties tonight.”
    “Logan—”
    He nips at my earlobe. “Hush.”
    I go silent on a breath, an outrush of surprise. His fingers are dancing over my hip bone. Over my belly, to my opposite hip. Teasing. Lower, lower. Tickling my thighs, outside to inside. Tracing across my pudendum.
    I whimper.
    I want his touch.
    It’s been so long. A month of celibacy, for us both.
    I feel wild with need. Frantic. I’ve buried it under worry, brushed it aside in favor of ignoring everything, pretending this is life, running, exercising, eating with Logan, sleeping with Logan, working on material for Comportment.
    But now, with his fingers easing closer to my core, feathering over my labia—I need him.
Need.
    “God, Logan.”
    “What, baby?”
    I can’t help gyrating my hips. “Please.”
    “Please what, Isabel?”
    “Touch me.”
    He doesn’t answer with words. His middle finger slides into me, slides deep into my wet, hot core. Curls, moves, withdraws. I ache now. Ache all over. I’m shaking. Lay my head back against his shoulder and widen my knees. He touches me again, this time applying a gentle pressure to my clitoris. I whimper, gasp, and my knees buckle as lightning sears through me.
    It feels like an eternity since I’ve felt Logan thus, felt this touch, this bliss, this connection I feel only with him.
    A rising, expanding violence within me. A detonation, impending. A susurrus in my ears, a roaring of blood in my veins. Heat in my belly. A rush of sensation.
    He slides that one finger into me again, withdraws it. Smears my wetness over my clit. One hand is holding up my dress, keeping it out of the way, the other at my core, his thighs hard against the backs of mine. I’m leaning back against him, limp. Capable of nothing but the motion of my hips as he slides his finger in, and out. In, and out. Against my clit. In, and out. Two fingers, then, suddenly.
    Climax burgeons.
    I’m gasping, arching my spine, fully giving in to the bursting wildness.
    And then he stops.
    Lets my dress fall down around my ankles, and crouches behind me. He’s fetched a pair of my shoes to match the dress, black Blahniks with a three-inch stiletto heel. He circles my ankle with his strongfingers, lifts my foot, slides the shoe on. I transfer my weight, let him ease the other shoe on, next. I’m out of breath, aching, a little angry that he stopped.
    “Logan . . .” I start.
    He stands up in front of me, brushes the pad of his thumb over my cheekbone. “Isabel?”
    “You stopped.”
    There’s a knock at the door. Logan leans in, kisses me. A brief, scorching scouring of his lips against mine. Too short, but intense. “Time to go.”
    “I haven’t done my makeup.”
    “Don’t need any. You’re fucking sexy just like that. And I guarantee you’ll be the most beautiful woman there, makeup or no.”
    “I can’t go to the Met without makeup on, Logan. It isn’t done.”
    “Dinner is in forty, and we’ll be pushing it with traffic like it is.”
    “I can be quick.”
    Another knock.
    “Grab some stuff and bring it with. Do it in the car.”
    “I’m not ready, Logan. I—a quiet dinner, maybe. But the opera? The Met? People will be watching. You can’t just—just spring this on me.”
    He moves past me, into the bathroom. I hear makeup cases and tubes clattering, a zipper closing. And then he’s hustling me out the door, a black leather case in his hands. I glance behind me as he’s closing the door. The last thing I see are my panties on the floor of his living room, a pile of gray cotton, abandoned.
    My core aches. I don’t