What He Decides (What He Wants, Book Eleven) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance)

 
WHAT HE DECIDES (WHAT HE WANTS, BOOK
ELEVEN)

By Hannah Ford

Copyright 2015, Hannah Ford, all rights
reserved.
 
This book is a work of
fiction, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.

NOAH

I laughed.

Charlotte declaring she was going to lure
a killer out of hiding was the most ludicrous thing I’d ever heard.
  
It was so ludicrous, I was sure
it had to be a joke.

She looked at me, those dark doe-eyes
wide and serious, and my heart clenched as I thought about her being in any
kind of danger.
 
“I’m not kidding,”
she said softly, biting her lip.

I laughed again.

“Noah!”
 
She sat up.
 
The
sight of her in my office chair, the moonlight shining through the window and
illuminating her skin made me long for her again, even though I’d just had her.
 
Blood rushed to my cock as I took in
her lush curves and creamy skin.
 
“Stop laughing.”

“Then stop telling jokes.”

“I told you, I’m not joking.”
 
Her eyes hardened in steely
determination, and white hot anger shot through me, threatening my control.

“Charlotte,” I said quietly.
 
“You putting yourself in harm’s way is
not something to joke about.”
 
I
grabbed her wrists and pulled her toward me so that her face was just
millimeters from mine.
 
My gaze
roamed her face, searching for clues that she understood the severity of the
situation.

“I’m not joking,” she said again, and my
anger blazed brighter.

“Stop.”
 
My
grip on her wrists tightened, and I rolled her over on the chair, pressing my
body on top of hers.
 
My cock
throbbed and hardened against her core.

I love you,
I thought.
 
I love you more than
I’ve loved anyone, even Nora, and I was sure I could never love anyone the way
I loved her.
 

The thought of Charlotte roaming the city
while some deranged lunatic stalked her filled me with a rage I hadn’t felt for
years, ever since the night I had to take a bat to my stepfather’s legs.
 
A rage like that was uncontrollable,
and if she ignited that in me, I wasn’t sure what would happen.

“Noah,” she whispered as I pushed her
hair off her face.

“Shh,” I put my finger to her lips.
 
She needed to say quiet.
 

I ran my hands over her body, delighting
in her soft curves.
 
She was
everything to me.
 
Without
Charlotte, I had nothing.

Without Charlotte, I
was
nothing.

I would do whatever it took to keep her
safe.

Whatever
it took.

If that meant I spent the rest of my life
in jail, so be it.

She was mine to protect, and I would give
my life for her in any way it was required.

CHARLOTTE

Noah’s lips parted slightly as he gazed
down at me.
 
His hands roamed over
my stomach, my hips, my thighs, and I could feel my body responding to his
touch, could feel myself becoming wet between my legs as I instinctively
reached for him.

I loved how the weight of his body felt
on top of mine, loved how small and delicate he made me feel.
 
I didn’t even try to stop him as his
fingertips grazed the curve of my stomach. I groaned softly as he lowered his
head and licked my collarbone, his tongue warm and wet against my skin.

He pushed inside of me, stretching my
opening around him as his eyes stayed locked on mine.

“Charlotte,” he whispered before kissing
me softly on the lips.
 

He kept going, moving soft and slow, his
eyes on mine.
 
I gasped and tipped
my head back, closing my eyes as waves of pleasure slid through my body.

“Look at me,” he murmured, his breath
warm on my skin.
 
“Look at me when
you come, baby.”
 
I opened my eyes
and saw the emotion I was feeling mirrored on his face, and the intensity of
that coupled with the connection I felt to him pushed me over the edge.
 
I came, feeling myself contract on his
shaft, and a second later, he came too, his warm liquid filling me.

He stayed inside of me for a moment, our
bodies tangled together until our breathing slowed and our heart rates returned
to normal.
 
Then he stood up and
crossed the room to the heavy oak wardrobe that stood in the corner of his
office. He opened one of the bottom drawers, pulled out a pair track pants for
himself and one of his sweaters for me.
 
He slipped on the track pants and then returned to where I was on the chair.

“Arms up,” he said, and I held my arms in
the air obediently.
 
He pulled the
sweater over my head, and I wrapped myself in the warmth of the material,
inhaling the scent of his laundry detergent.

“Are you hungry?” Noah asked.
 
“Shall we order in?
 
Or would you like to go back to my
apartment to eat?”

I curled my legs up under me on the
chair, pulling the sleeves of his sweater down over my wrists.
 
I loved the way it felt to swim in his
clothes, loved that his things made me feel safe and protected.

“Are we even going to talk about what
just happened?”
 
I asked carefully.

He was picking up the belt he’d used on
me from the floor, and his eyes glinted with wickedness.
 
“What is there to talk about,
Charlotte?
 
You seemed to enjoy
it.”

My face flushed as I remembered what we’d
just done, how he’d taken me in the ass, put me up on the ottoman on all fours
and entered me, all the while pulling on my hair, tangling it with the belt
he’d wrapped around my neck.

“I’m not talking about the sex, Noah,” I
said.
 

“What are you talking about,
Charlotte?”
 
His back was to me as
he opened his desk drawer and placed the belt inside.
 
But I could tell from his tone that I was treading on
dangerous ground.
 
I wasn’t
stupid
 
- he’d fucked me soft and
slow to distract me.

But I wouldn’t be distracted.

Not from this.

“I’m talking about using me.
 
To lure out whoever killed Katie.”

He slid the drawer shut slowly.
 
Then he gripped the edge of his desk
and leaned over it, the muscles in his arms flexing.
 
The light from the desk lamp bounced off his bronze skin,
making him look more like a model in a photo shoot for office furniture than a
powerful lawyer.
 
He closed his
eyes for a moment, then opened them.
 
But still, he didn’t look at me.
 
“That’s not going to happen.”
 
His tone was measured, and I could tell it was taking every ounce of his
self-control not to explode.

But I was done treading carefully.

Now that I’d seen the evidence, there was
no getting away from the truth.
 
If
we didn’t do something drastic, there was a good chance Noah would spend the
rest of his life in jail.
 

“Noah,” I said, doing my best to keep my
voice calm.
 
“You need to do
something drastic.
 
You need to
–”

“Don’t tell me what I need to do,” he
said, cutting me off.
 
His voice
was raised, and I could tell he was losing his grip on his control.
 
The thought gave me a sick
satisfaction.
 
He
should
be losing his grip on his control.
 
Everything about this situation was out
of control, and for him to think otherwise was insane.
 
“What I need to do is keep you safe.”

“Oh, okay,” I said, sick of playing his
game.
 
“And how are you going to do
that from jail, Noah?
 
How are you
going to keep me safe while you’re locked up and we’re allowed one visit a week
where we can’t even touch each other?”

“I’m not going to jail.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Charlotte!” he said.
 
“Enough!”
 
His cheeks were flushed, his muscular chest heaving as his
breathing deepened.

“Enough what?” I asked.
 
I stood up and grabbed my jeans off the
floor.
 
“Enough truth?
 
Enough uncomfortable
conversations?
 
I’m sorry, Noah,
but sometimes life involves uncomfortable conversations, it involves dealing
with things, not just burying your head in the sand and pretending nothing is
happening.”

He walked over to me, grabbed my
hand.
 
“You’re not leaving.”

“Yes, I am.”

“No, you’re not.”
 
He wrestled my jeans out of my hand,
threw them on the floor.
 
His face
was a mask of determination.
 
But I
was sick of playing by his rules, sick of the arrogance he displayed by
deciding anything I had to say should be dismissed because he thought he knew
better.

“Fine.”
 
I crossed my arms over my chest.
 
“But if I stay here, we’re talking about this.
 
We’re discussing it.
 
You can’t just dismiss me because you
don’t think I’m smart enough to exist on your level.”

His eyes darkened, his face clouding with
confusion for a moment before softening.
 
“Is that what you think?
 
That I don’t think you’re smart enough to have an opinion?”

“I don’t know what you think,” I
countered.
 
“Because you won’t tell
me.”

“Charlotte.”
 
He took my hand in his.
 
His strong fingers began kneading my palm, the massage
causing the tension to instantly begin flowing out of my body.
 
His gaze was on my face, watching me,
smoky and penetrating and disconcerting.
 
I hated that he had this effect on me, hated that every time I tried to
stand up to him, he would touch me or kiss me or say something that made me
lose my senses, made me lose my mind.
  
“You are the smartest, kindest, most amazing woman I
know.
 
You are everything I want,
more than I could dream.”

His words sent a lusty warmth sliding
through my body.

I longed to surrender to him, to just let
him take care of everything.
 
To
let him wrap me in his sweater and take me back to his apartment, to let him
take control, to let him tie me up and take me and render me powerless.
 

It would certainly have been easier to
just play his game, to let him pull the strings, to test me like he had today
at that meeting with Professor Worthington and Clementine.

For a moment, I almost gave in.

But I pulled my hand away from his.

“Then why won’t you talk to me about
this?” I asked softly.
 
I took my
palm and pressed it against his bare chest.
 
I could feel his heart beating, strong and steady.
 
“If you mean those things that you say,
then why won’t you talk to me, Noah?
 
Why won’t you let me in?”

He took in a deep breath through his
nose, and I could tell he was fighting his need to control.
 
I’d seen him battling against it
before, but this time, I wasn’t willing to let it go.

“We could at least try to
 
–”

“No,” he said, taking my hand in his and
pulling it away from his chest.
 
My
fingers balled into a fist and he wrapped his hand around it.
 
“This is not up for discussion,
Charlotte.
 
I refuse to let you
endanger yourself in any way.”

“What choice do we have?” I asked
him.
 
“You know how cases like this
end up, Noah.
 
You’ve seen cases
like this, you know what the prosecutors are going to say, you know what the
end result is going to be.”

“You’re acting rather arrogant right now,
Ms. Holloway, assuming you know what a jury is going to think or how my defense
team is going to proceed.”