What He Commits (What He Wants, Book Thirteen) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (3 page)

“The situation has changed again,
Charlotte.
 
You were in danger
tonight.
 
And I have to recalibrate
based on that fact.”

“Nothing happened.”

“Enough!” he yelled, his voice echoing
through the apartment.
 
He crossed
the room to me and grabbed my wrists, pushed me up against the side of the
island until the hard marble was pushing into the small of my back.
 
“You will not defy me, Charlotte.”

The emotion and anger were prevalent in
his voice.
 
I reached out and
touched his cheek.

“I don’t want to defy you,” I
whispered.
 
“I want to help you.”

This seemed to anger him even more, and
he grabbed me by my buttocks and picked me up, setting me down on the edge of
the island.
 
His mouth crashed into
mine, his tongue moving past my lips and tangling with mine. I moaned into his
mouth as his hands sunk into the skin of my ass.
 

His kiss intensified as he pulled me
toward him, grabbing my thighs and pushing them open.
 
His hands moved through my hair as he kissed me, and his
cock was pressed against me, thick and hard through his pants.

He pulled back and trailed a line of
kisses down over my throat, over my cleavage, his hands grabbing at the coat I
was wearing, grabbing at the lace of my body suit.
 
He was frenzied, even though he’d just had me at Force.

“Noah,” I breathed.

But he didn’t stop.
 
He pushed my jacket down over my
shoulders, clawing at the fabric of my bodysuit.
 
It tore, exposing my breasts to him, and his mouth descended
onto my nipples.

“Noah,” I said.
 
“Please.
 
Wait,
let’s slow down...”

I wanted to be with him, wanted him to
control me, but not like this.
 
He
was in another zone, completely shut off from his emotions.
 
He sucked hungrily on my nipple until
it was hard and peaked.

I was slick with moisture between my
legs, my body responding to his touch, his mouth, the hardness of his cock
rubbing against me.
 
But I wanted
more.
 
I couldn’t get the images of
the night out of my head—seeing Josh, the sound of his voice as he called
me a whore, the look in that girl’s eyes as she clamped onto my leg.
 

I wanted to get pulled under by Noah’s touch,
wanted to lose myself in his kisses.
 
But what I
needed
was for him
to comfort me.
 
I knew this was his
way of working through his emotions, that the way he calmed himself was by
dominating my body.

But I needed to be calmed, too.

“Wait,” I said.
 
“I want to talk.”

“What do you want to talk about?” he
growled into my ear.
 
His fingers
moved the crotch of my bodysuit to the side and slid inside of me. I bit my lip
to keep from moaning, but the sound escaped anyway.
 
He grinned wickedly at my reaction.

“I want to talk about what happened
tonight,” I said.
 
“I want to
figure out what we’re going to do.”

He ignored me, instead sliding his
fingers deeper into my pussy, his thumb brushing my clit as his index finger
curled and rubbed inside of me.
 
His index finger was rough, probing, his thumb soft and gentle.
 
The contrast in the two sensations sent
waves of pleasure rocketing through my body.

“We,” he said softly as his mouth moved
over my collarbone.
 
“Are not going
to do anything.
 
You are going to
stay out of this.”

“No.”
 
I shook my head.

“Let me take care of you,” he said.
 
“Let me take care of everything.”

His strong hands gripped the front of my
bodysuit and ripped it apart, exposing my breasts completely.
 
He pulled me forward, grabbing my
thighs and wrapping them around his waist.

“Noah please,” I said.
 
“Noah, I want to talk about this.”

He smiled devilishly and began to
unbuckle his belt.
 
Desire and lust
burned in his eyes, and I knew he was turned on by this, knew he loved the fact
that I wanted to talk and he was going to take me anyway.

“Get on your knees,” he said, and I shook
my head.

“No.”

The glint in his eyes burned brighter as
his want for me deepened due to my protests.
 
He reached for me, slid me off the counter until he was
holding me up, then pushed me down onto the floor until I was forced to my
knees.
 
My body responded to the
force, my hormones racing and pulsing inside of me, commanding me to let him do
what he wanted.

But my heart fought back, insisting that I
wanted more from him,
 
that I
deserved
more from him.

“Noah,” I said, but he grabbed me by the
back of my hair and pulled my head back.
 

“Quiet,” he growled.
 
One hand kept my head held tight, and
with the other, he unbuttoned his pants, unzipped them, pulled his cock
out.
 
It was rock hard and thick,
and I groaned, imagining it inside my mouth, my pussy, my ass.

Heat flooded my body.

But I resisted.

I wanted to fuck him.

But I wanted to love him more.

So I did the only thing I could.

“Red,”
I said, and he immediately looked as if
he’d been slapped.
 
He dropped his
hands from my head and stepped away from me, putting distance between us.

The pain on his face was so unbearable
that I instantly wanted take back what I’d said.
 
I would have done anything, would have let him do anything
to me, if only he would have stopped looking at me with that look of horror on
his face.

“Noah,” I tried.

“Charlotte,” he said.
 
“Oh, God, Charlotte, I’m so sorry.”

“No.”
 
I shook my head.
 
“You haven’t done anything wrong, you didn’t – ”

The sound of his phone ringing echoed
through the room, and the pain in his eyes disappeared, replaced with blackness.
 
Before I could say anything, he’d
turned and grabbed the phone.

“Cutler,” he barked.
 
He listened intently, frowning in
concentration at what the person on the other end of the line was saying.
 
His gaze flicked over to me for a
moment, and I wondered if whatever he was hearing had something to do with the
case, had something to do with me.
 
He turned and walked out of the room, his voice disappearing down the
hallway, allowing me to only catch snatches of the conversation.
 
“…fine…to be expected…”

I wondered if it was Clementine, if they
were going over some kind of legal strategy, and if so, why Noah had felt the
need to walk out of the room so that I wouldn’t hear.

When he returned a moment later, all
signs of horror and regret had been wiped from his face.

“The evidentiary hearing will be tomorrow
at noon,” he said.

I gaped at him.
 
“But the DA’s office never even called me.
 
They never even…”

“Colin has decided to call you as a
witness for the defense.
 
He pushed
to get the hearing moved up, and the judge has agreed.”

I nodded.
 
It was a good move – getting me put on the official
list as a witness for the defense.
 
That way, it would look as if Noah wasn’t trying to hide the fact that
we had a BDSM relationship.
 
By
putting it all out in the open, it looked as if he had nothing to hide.
 
And since the prosecutor had kept the
possibility open that they were going to call me as a witness anyway, it made
sense.

“But the DA’s office didn’t interview
me,” I said.
 
I shook my head.
 
“They’ll want to know what I’m going to
say.”

“Colin said they hardly fought the motion
to fast track the hearing.”

Noah looked at me, and I looked at him.

Neither of us said anything, but we both
knew exactly what that meant.
 

The prosecution was going to question me
without even knowing what my answers were going to be.
 
It was a strategy – they wouldn’t
know my answers, but I wouldn’t know their questions.
 
They were going to try to trip me up.
 

 
“We should go to bed,” Noah said.
 
“Tomorrow is a big day.”

I hesitated, still wanting to talk, still
wanting to connect with him, even more so now.
 
But I wasn’t sure how he would react, and I was afraid of
pushing him.

So I let him lead me to the master
bathroom and start the shower for me.
 
He returned to the bedroom and I slipped under the stream of hot water,
letting the spray hit my shoulders, my neck, my back.
 
When I was done, I wrapped myself in a robe from the closet
and returned to the bedroom.
 
Noah
was sitting in bed, shirtless, his laptop open in front of him.

I crossed the room to his dresser and
pulled out one of his t-shirts.
 
My
things had been brought here, but I wanted to wear something of his, to feel
close to him, even if it was only in some small way.

I put it on and slipped under the sheets
next to him.
 
My body felt exhausted,
but my mind was racing, my thoughts swirling and tangling at warp speed.
 
I prayed he would reach for me, or at
least
say
something to me.

But the only sound coming from his side
of the bed was the clack of computer keys.

I closed my eyes tight, and after about half
an hour, I heard Noah put his computer away and switch off the light.
 
He stayed firmly on the other side of
the bed.
 
He didn’t reach for me,
or try to talk to me.
 
His foot
didn’t brush against mine.

There was no contact.

I
can’t do this anymore,
I
thought.
 
I love him, but I can’t do it.
 
It’s too hard.

I was scared and nervous and my heart was
aching.
 
The one person I wanted to
comfort me was completely closed off.
 
Why was I risking everything for him?
 
It was the same question that swirled around me constantly,
and it permeated my thoughts, rolling in like a fog and blocking out everything
else.

Eventually I dropped into a restless
sleep, the kind of sleep that left you tired and groggy.

A dream began to take form in my mind, a
dream of that girl in the classroom dungeon.
  
I felt the coldness of her hand, saw the blackness of
her eyes as she begged me for help.
 
In the dream, she pulled me into the classroom.
 
There were chairs and desks, and at the
front of the room stood a man, clothed in black leather.

When he talked, he had the distorted
voice of Anonymous.
 
“Come in,
Charlotte,” he said.
 
“It’s time
for your lesson.”

I didn’t want to go into the room, but
the girl holding my hand pulled me in.
 
“Please,” she said.
 
“You’re
our only hope.”

I walked across the floor, but it had
changed from concrete to something soft.
 
I looked down and realize I was walking through dirt, and the desks had
turned into stone graves.

The masked man came toward me, and I
reached up to pull his mask off, but I realized there was no way to remove it
– his black leather suit was all one piece, with no holes for his eyes or
his mouth.

He put his hands on my shoulders, pushing
me down into the soft dirt, and it began swallowing me up, pulling me under
like quicksand.
 
I looked down and
I could see hands reaching up from the ground, grabbing at me, and I somehow
understood they were taking me to my grave.

“This is what you deserve, Charlotte,”
the voice of Anonymous echoed through the room, and I wasn’t sure it was even
coming from the masked man.
 
“You’re going to die now.”

I looked to the waitress in the corner,
but her lips were blue and her eyes had rolled back into her head.
 
I thought she was dead, but she was
still somehow standing upright.