Chapter 2

Chapter

Two

Y ou seem to think that's the end of it. You stand up, cross the room with quick, angry strides, pour a measure of scotch from the decanter. Down it in a single swallow. Pour; swallow. You repeat this twice more, until you must lean on the table, glass under your palm, breathing hard. A third of the contents of the decanter are now in your belly.

"And that's the story of Jakob Kasparek." The storyteller's cadence is gone. The distant, vacant expression is gone. The mask is back in place. "Anything else you wish to know?"

"Where is Logan?"

You do not even bother to glance at me. "The morgue, I would presume."

"I don't believe you."

You shrug. "No matter to me whether you believe it or not. He's dead and you're mine."

"I am not yours."

You gesture at the door. "Then leave."

I am at the door in three strides. The knob is in my hand, twisted. The door opens. But I cannot leave. Not because I am yours, but because there are still so many questions.

"If Jakob Kasparek vanished, then how is it he signed me out of the hospital, rather than Caleb Indigo?"

A silence greets that question.

Something else you said has been percolating.

"You said I have been yours since I was sixteen, Caleb. What did that mean?"

More silence.

"How old am I? Why did you tell me I was mugged, when I was really in a car accident? Why did you tell me I was eighteen when I went into the coma? How long was I in the coma?" I'm stalking closer to you with each question. My voice rises with each question. "What is the truth? What is the truth about me, Caleb? Or Jakob, should I say?"

You fly across the intervening space in the blink of an eye. Your huge powerful hand grips my chin, my throat. Tips my head backward. Your other hand curls around the base of my spine and jerks me flush against your body.

"Jakob Kasparek is no more. He is no one. He does not exist. My name ... is Caleb ." Your voice is ice, sharp as razors and deadly as a viper's venom.

Your fingers crush my jaw, pinch my windpipe. I am pinioned against you. Helpless. And then your lips crash against mine. Roughly, at first. Angrily. Violently. With shocking, lip-bruising force...

You kiss me.

With mesmerizing, hypnotic passion, you kiss me. Rough becomes gentle. This, perhaps more than the kiss itself, stuns me. The tenderness, it is exquisite. You kiss me delicately. Skillfully. You kiss me, and you kiss me, and I am breathless. Your tongue whispers against my lips, slips graceful between my teeth and tangles with my tongue. Your palms play against my back. Fingertips dimple my flesh, and slide lower.

What is happening?

Your sorcery, it is not this affection. This is some new magic. Some new witchcraft.

The kiss, your kiss, Caleb, it is like nothing I have ever felt in my life. You kiss me as if you've been waiting for all of eternity to kiss me thus, as if you are starved for my lips, thirsting for my mouth. You clutch my back and hold me to you as if you are terrified to lose me. And your hand, clutching and crushing my jaw, loosens. Gentles. Glides up, over my cheek, past my ear, and into my hair. You lean into me, until I am bent backward over your palm, and I am held up by your strength alone.

There is no breath, with this kiss. No thought. Nothing. Just this kiss.

"God, Isabel. Isabel." You whisper this against my lower lip. It is a breath only, so low I might have imagined it.

It is a plea, that whisper. A broken, pain-barbed plea.

What does it mean? I cannot begin to understand.

You break the kiss. Stagger backward as if wounded. Your eyes are shadows. Haunted. As if for the first time in all the years I've known you, a curtain has been pulled aside, and I am suddenly truly seeing the contents of your soul.

For a moment then, you are Jakob. A young boy abandoned to fate, abandoned to the cruel streets of New York. I see the truth in the tale you told. You wipe your mouth with your wrist, brow wrinkled in confusion. Eyes coruscating with agony. You are sixteen-year-old Jakob, the whore-boy. The drug addict. The plaything.

And it is Jakob who kisses me once more. Who with hesitancy and tenderness unzips my dress. Plucks open my bra. Slides off my panties. It is Jakob who divests himself of his clothes. Who presses his skin against mine.

I am wrapped up, woven into a spell, tangled in the fabric of a lie engineered out of truth. It is Jakob who lifts me off my feet, carries me to my bed. Lays me down.

Who kisses me,

and kisses me,

and kisses me . . .

It is Jakob.

And God, Jakob is something I cannot resist. Caleb's power, skill, and relentless hunger, but with a tenderness and vulnerability only Jakob could possess. Confusion and hatred and loathing and disgust boil in some secret cauldron within my soul, but Jakob's fiery touch sears it away. I know this touch. It knows me. Knows my body, knows how to bring me to writhing need with but a whisper of a fingertip against me, just so.

Jakob, Caleb, the names tangle. The vulnerability in your eyes is at war with shadows. Violence is an oil slick across the gentility in your features.

Fuck, I am lost. I am drowning.

You stare down at me, and you let me see something in you. Some hint of a soul. And it is a soul at war. A soul in pain. You kiss me with that pain, and it is jagged. Your breath is rough and ragged as you lave kisses over my breasts. As you finger my opening and drive me to moans as only you can. You drag a thick finger through my wetness and caress me to orgasm, and you kiss me as I whimper. While you are kissing me, while I am whimpering and clenching and writhing and shaking, you thrust your hips, and you enter me. And when your hip bones clash against mine, you break the kiss and you fix your embattled, pain-racked eyes on mine. Your eyes do not leave me as you push into me. Do not leave mine as you withdraw. Your face takes on the expression of a man in utter agony. As if you are ripping away a mask surgically implanted in your skin. As if you are ripping open your soul and letting me see the gaping wounds life has left in you.

You make love to me as if it hurts to do so. As if the pleasure of being inside me is too much, and thus is pain. Exquisite torment. An agony of ecstasy. That term is much bandied about, but when it really occurs—a true agony of ecstasy—the reality of it is hellish to witness. Such overpowering bliss it is an overload. A too-long hit of pure oxygen to dying lungs. A feast of rich food on an empty, starving stomach.

Your hips piston against mine. You are levered over me, staring down at me as you drive in and out of me like a madman, like a man possessed. I hold on to you and try to pierce the wildness in your eyes, try to see into you, try to catch some glimpse of who you are and why you're doing this, what it means.

You moan, brokenly. Tortured groans. Your manic, fucking thrusts falter with intensity, and you release inside me. You are not blinking, not even breathing now, thrust deep, spasming. Hips fluttering.

A groan escapes you. The sound of a shredded soul.

Your forehead lowers to mine.

You are gasping, each outbreath a grunt, a moan, a groan.

"Isabel." That whisper again.

As if my name is an incantation. A prayer to an unknown god.

A time without measure, seconds, minutes. I do not know.

And then you lift your head, seek my eyes. Looking for something.

"Caleb?"

You flinch as if struck. Shudder.

And then

you

kiss

me.

Slow. Deep. Sweetly, even.

You touch my face. My cheek. Fingertips fluttering over my eyelids, tracing the contour of my nose. Memorizing.

You pull away, and look at me once more.

And then I watch as the mask clicks into place. I can almost hear the clink-snick of the armor plates touching and fusing.

And I wonder . . .

Did I speak the wrong name?