What He Reveals (What He Wants, Book Eight) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (4 page)

“Where are you going?” I demanded.
 
Fear flooded through my body.
 
I was afraid that if he left, he wasn’t
going to come back.
 
Ever. And the
thought of not seeing him again was unbearable.

“Back to Force,” he said.
 
“To find out who called you and kill
them.”

“Noah!” I said, stepping in front of
him.
 
“Stop!
 
You’re acting crazy.”

“Am I?” he demanded.
 
“Am I really?
 
That motherfucker had you in a room with a knife up to your
body, Charlotte.
 
He’s a murderer.
 
He killed that woman.
 
Do you understand that?”

I nodded.
 
“I didn’t know…”

“No, you didn’t.
 
But you would have if you’d just told
me, if you’d just used that extremely intelligent brain of yours to really
think instead of just doing whatever the hell you wanted!”

I was still in front of the door,
blocking his way, and I crossed my arms over my chest.
 
“Oh, right,” I said.
 
“I shouldn’t have kept any information
to myself.
 
I should have shared
it, just like you do, right, Noah?”

“What I do is my business, Charlotte.”

“Really?”
 
I threw my hands up in the air.
 
“Really?
 
Is
that really what you think?
 
That
everything that happens to you has to be kept to yourself?
 
You’ve been arrested for murder,
Noah.
 
Murder.
 
You could end up in jail for the rest of your life.
 
Life.
 
In.
 
Prison.
 
Try to keep your privacy in prison,
Noah.
 
See how well that works out
for you.”

“I haven’t been convicted yet, have I?”

“No, you haven’t.
 
But you will be if you keep sabotaging
your own case.
 
Didn’t you think it
was important to tell your lawyer that you have a brother who’s a murderer, who
also hung out at Force?
 
A brother
you have a complicated history with, who might have a reason to hurt people
close to you?
 
Didn’t you think it
might be a good idea for the police to look into where Audi was when Katie
died?”

“I did.”

“What?”
 
I shook my head, confused.
 
“You never mentioned anything to me about Audi James, Noah.”

“You’re not my lawyer, Charlotte,” he
said. “Colin Worthington knows about Audi, and it’s been looked into.
 
Audi has an alibi.”

“Wait, what?”
 
I shook my head, confused.
 
“Professor Worthington knows about Audi?
 
But that doesn’t make any sense.
 
You’ve only been talking to me.”

But even as I was saying the words, the
truth was forming in my mind.
 
Noah
was only talking to me
right now.
 
He’d been talking to Worthington before, when this first started, when
the police had been looking into him because of Dani, before Katie had even
been killed.
 
Of course Noah had
given Professor Worthington more information than he’d given me.

 
Yes, Noah was refusing to talk to anyone except for me now,
but it wasn’t because he trusted me, or because he wanted to get closer to me,
or because he wanted to help my career.
 
He was only talking to me because he knew I could be controlled, knew
he’d be able to get away with talking about the case when and how he wanted.
 
He’d wanted to control the flow of
information, to pick and choose what information he gave and who he gave it to.

This had never had anything to do with
me.
 
It had always been about
control.

“Charlotte,” he said, as the
understanding dawned on my face.
 
“It’s not like that.”

“It’s not like what?”
 
I asked, my voice breaking.

“I wasn’t using you.”

I laughed.
 
“Then what do you call it?”

“What do I call it?”
 
He grabbed me by my wrists, pushed me
so that my back was up against the door.
 
His body pressed against mine, and my knees felt weak from his closeness,
his smell,
his
presence.
 
“You need me to spell this out for you, what this is?
 
I wasn’t lying when I said I was
falling in love with you,” he rasped.
 
“I
am
falling in love with you.”

I let the words wash over me.
 
His eyes were on mine, stormy and
intense with emotion.
 
The longing
I felt, the hope that he meant what he said, was too much to take.
 
I closed my eyes, feeling a tear slip
out and leave a salty trail down my cheek.

“Look at me,” he demanded.

I took a breath and opened my eyes.
 

“You have meant more to me than any woman
I’ve ever known.
 
You are beautiful
and sexy and smart and you don’t put up with my shit.
 
You are everything I’ve ever wanted and more.”

Meant.
 

He was using past tense.

And that’s all I needed to know.

I pushed him away from me and walked back
into the room, making sure to keep my back to him.
 
I wasn’t going to turn around, wasn’t gong to look at
him.
 
If he was going to leave, he
was going to have to do it without me looking at him.

The silence stretched between us,
excruciating in its stillness, as I waited for him to break my heart.

“I’m not good for you,” he said.
 
“I’m putting you in danger.”

Don’t
cry, don’t cry,
don’t
cry.
 
 
I blinked quickly, trying to stop the
tears that were slowly sliding down my cheeks from becoming an avalanche.

“You could have been hurt tonight,
Charlotte.
 
By
Audi.
 
By whoever killed
Dani and Nora and
Katie.
  
My demons will overtake you, Charlotte.
 
They’ll overtake you and they’ll ruin
you.”

I bit my lip to keep from screaming at
him, for calling him a bastard, a fraud, an asshole, and any other name that
might hurt him.
 
But just as fast
as my anger burned, it flamed out.
 

Anger wouldn’t do anything.
 
Calling him names wouldn’t help.
 
Nothing could hurt him.
 
He’d built his walls, and nothing could
tear them down.
 
He had no weakness.

Except for one.

I reached down and pulled his sweater off
me, then tossed it on the floor.

“Charlotte,” he said, his voice laced with
warning. “What are you doing?”

“Please,” I said, pulling the straps of
my dress down, over my breasts, over my hips, slipping the fabric over my thighs
and stepping out of it until I was left in just my thong and stilettos.
 
“Take me.”

I got to my knees and crawled over to
him, making sure to keep my ass high in the air like I knew he liked.
 
When I reached him, I looked up at him
and placed my hands behind my back.
 
“I’ll do whatever you want, Noah.
 
Do whatever you want to me.
 
Just, please… don’t leave.”

His eyes blazed as he reached down and
ran his thumb over my lips.
 
He
slipped his finger into my mouth and I sucked on it hungrily. Lust and want
overtook his face as he slid his finger out of my mouth and ran it down over my
neck, trailing it over my collarbone.

I tilted my head back, thrusting my
breasts out for him.

“Please,” I begged.
 
“Please, I’ll do anything.”

“Charlotte,” he said.
 
But it wasn’t the way I wanted him to
say my name. It wasn’t domineering.
 
It wasn’t demanding.
 
It
wasn’t the voice of a man who knew what he wanted as was going to get it.

It was the voice of a man who’d made his
decision and was sticking to it.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

He kneeled down on the carpet next to me
and kissed me softly on the lips.

And then he got up and walked out the
door.

The tears came as soon as I heard the click
of the door behind him.
 
Heartbreak
and despair overtook me, along with the kind of crying that caused my body to
shake, my eyes to swell shut,
my
stomach to ache.
 
I collapsed onto the floor, not caring
that I was naked, not caring that I could feel my cut starting to come open,
not caring about anything except the fact that he was gone.

End
of Book Eight – Click here for Book Nine, WHAT HE RESISTS,
available
now