What He Commits (What He Wants, Book Thirteen) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (4 page)

“No!” I screamed.
 
“No!”
 

The arms clawed at me, pulling me under,
dozens of them rising from the dirt.
 
They were the arms of the girls in the slave auction, tan and sparkly
but with rotting brown nails.

I was powerless as they dragged me down
with them.
 
I took in a breath, but
there was nothing I could do.
 
I
inhaled dirt and grit into my lungs as I slipped under, and I tried to scream
but I had no breath left.

I was dead.

“Charlotte!” Noah was calling my name
from somewhere far away, and my mind reached for him.
 
“Charlotte, wake up!”

I sat up straight in bed, waking from the
horrible nightmare.
 
I was drenched
in sweat, my body shivering in Noah’s t-shirt.

“It’s okay,” he said.
 
“It’s okay.
 
It was just a bad dream.”
 
He reached for me and held me, his hand stroking my hair as
I caught my breath.
 

“It was…” I tried to speak to tell him
what it was, but he shushed me.

“Shh,” he said.
 
“Shh, you’re okay now.
 
You’re okay.
 
Nothing bad is
happening.
 
You’re safe.
 
It was just a dream.”

I pulled away and looked at him.
 
“I was at Force,” I said.
 
“In that room, with that girl. They
were trying to kill me, they were trying to bury me alive.”

“It was just a dream,” he said.
 
“You’re fine.”

I reached out and touched his face,
running my finger over his cheekbone, his jaw, sliding my hands over the smooth
planes of his chest.
 
I needed to
know this was real, that I was really awake.
 
“It felt so real,” I whispered.

“This is real,” he whispered, and he
kissed my mouth softly.
 
“Charlotte,” he breathed.
 
“Charlotte, I’m so sorry.”

“For what?”

“For everything.
 
For putting you in this position.
 
This is all my fault.”

“It’s not,” I said.
 
The room was still and dark, the only
sound the muted rush of cars coming from the street below.
 
Noah was cast in shadow, the outline of
his face beautiful next to me.

“I just… I want to be close to you,” I
said.
 
“I want to feel close.”
 
I pressed my palm against his bare
chest, feeling the beat of his heart.
 
“I want to know you.”
 
Everything was spinning out of control in my life, and I felt like if I
could just stay still with him for a moment, if he would just let me in, it
would be worth it.

He took his hand and pressed it against
my chest, feeling my heart beat through his t-shirt.

“I’m trying,” he whispered.

“I know.”
 

He lowered his mouth to mine and kissed
me softly.
 
I kissed him back as he
wrapped his arms around me and pushed me back gently onto the bed, his body
pressing into mine as he laid on top of me.

“You are so fucking beautiful,” he
murmured.
 
“If anything ever
happened to you, Charlotte, I wouldn’t be able to go on.”
 
His eyes darkened with pain, and I
wondered if he was thinking about Nora.

“Nothing is going to happen to me,” I
said.

“Not if I have anything to do with
it.”
 
His jaw set in determination
as his hand slid down the side of my body over the thin fabric of the t-shirt I
was wearing.

“You can’t protect me every second,
Noah.”

“Obviously.”

“What do you mean?”

“You used the safe word.”

“So?”

“So I hurt you.”

I shook my head and stared at him.
 
“You didn’t hurt me, Noah.
 
I just… I wanted to be with you, but I
wanted to connect with you.”

“That is how I connect.”

“I know.”
 
I reached up and brushed my hand through his hair, pushing
it back from his forehead.
 
His
body stiffened at the intimacy of the gesture, but he didn’t pull away from me.
 
“But sometimes I want …”

“What?” he asked, lowering his head and
kissing my collarbone softly.
 
“What do you want?
 
This?”
 
He brushed his lips
against my skin again, tracing a flaming trail down over my breast.

His hands slipped under my t-shirt and
held my hips as he returned his lips to my mouth.
 

He pulled back and looked at me.
 
“This?” he asked again as he traced my
cheekbone with his finger.
 
“Is
this how you want it, Charlotte?”

I nodded, so overcome with emotion that I
didn’t trust myself to speak.

He slipped my t-shirt off in one fluid
movement, leaving me naked.
 
His
bare chest pressed against mine, my breasts flattening out against his hard
muscles.
 
He kissed me again on the
mouth, over and over again, his hands not moving from my hips, his kisses
leaving me breathless.

Every so often he would pull away and look
at me, our eyes fixed on each other, the intensity of our connection so strong
I could almost see it pulsing rhythmically between us.

He kissed down my body, over my stomach,
my thighs, my hip bones, his mouth exploring me softly, sensually.
 
For the first time ever I felt no
self-consciousness about him seeing me this way, exposed.
 
I could tell from the blazing desire in
his eyes that he thought I was beautiful, and that made me believe that I was.

His mouth slid further down, until he
reached the top of my center.
 
He
gazed up at me, his hands reaching up and sliding over my breasts before
traveling back down my breastbone, skittering over my ribs.

“I want to be inside of you,” he
whispered.

“I want you inside of me,” I whispered
back.

He raised his body and positioned himself
over me, sliding inside of me with one deep thrust.
 
He stayed still, his cock filling me as his mouth found
mine.

“Look at me,” he commanded and I did, our
eyes locked on each other as he began moving inside of me slowly and
passionately.
 
With every thrust
his shaft moved over my clit, his hands moved through my hair, his tongue
tangled with mine.

It was the most intense, erotic,
passionate thing I’d ever felt.

“Noah,” I whispered.

“Charlotte,” he whispered back.
 
“Oh, Charlotte.”

The sound of my name on his lips pushed
me over the edge, and my body broke into a million pieces as my orgasm rocked
through me, building in intensity as wave after wave of pleasure overtook me.

A second later, I felt Noah’s release
fill me, warm and comforting, our eyes still locked on each other.

He pulled out of me and wrapped his arms
around me.

My back rested against his chest, his
hands moving lazily down my arms, causing goose bumps to break out on my skin.

We lay there for a moment as our
breathing returned to normal and our heart rates slowed.
 
Then Noah reached down and pulled the
blanket up, covering us both, our legs tangled together.

I drifted off to sleep like that, with
his arms around me, marveling at the fact that I could be in such danger and
yet at the same time, feel so incredibly safe.

***

In the morning, Noah appeared at the side
of my bed, dressed in one of his signature dark suits, his hair wet from the
shower.

“Charlotte,” he said, setting a cup of
coffee down on the nightstand next to me, along with a bowl of oatmeal and
strawberries.
 
“It’s time to wake
up.”

“Oh.” I sat up in bed, still naked,
feeling a mess next to him, so clean and put together.
 
“How long have you been up?” I asked.

“A couple of hours.
 
I worked out and then showered.”

“You went for a run?”

“I used the treadmill in the gym.”

“You have a gym?” I asked.

“It’s nothing fancy, Charlotte.
 
Just a treadmill and some free
weights.”

“Oh.”
 
I filed it away under the list of things I didn’t know about
him.
 
Of course, him not telling me
he had a home gym was nothing to get upset about.
 
It wasn’t like I would have expected him to mention
something like that.
 
But it was
just another surprise, however small.

“Eat your breakfast and shower.
 
You’ll come to the office with me
today.”

“I have school.”

“You’re not going to school.”

“I have to go to school, Noah.”

“The hearing is today, Charlotte.”

“It’s not until noon.
 
I should be able to make my morning
classes.”
 
I wrapped my hands
around the cup of coffee he’d brought me.
 
The mug was warm, the liquid hot – I could see the steam curling
off the surface.
 
But my hands were
freezing, my body was freezing, and I couldn’t get warm.

 
“You’re not going to school,” Noah said.
 
“Josh will be there.”

“I’m going.”

He opened his mouth to protest, but I
shook my head.
 

“No.
 
Sitting around will do nothing except make me even more
stressed.
 
Besides, I have to keep
up with my schoolwork.
 
And Josh
won’t be in class today.
 
There’s
no way.
 
And even if he was, he’s
not going to try anything in front of all of those people.”

I wasn’t going to budge. What was I going
to do if I didn’t go to class?
 
Sit
around and drive myself crazy with all the things that could go wrong at the
hearing?
 
And it wasn’t like Josh
could hurt me at school, if he even showed up.
 
There would be a million people there.

Noah sighed, then leaned over and kissed
me on the forehead.
 
“Fine,” he
said.
 
“Get ready.
 
We’ll leave in forty-five minutes.”

***

He insisted on driving me himself, not
wanting to ride with Jared.
 
When
we pulled up in front of the school, we sat in the car for a moment with the
motor idling.
 
I looked out the
window.

It was a gorgeous day out.
 
The sky was bright shade of blue, the
sunlight slanting shallowly across the sky.
 
Everything was sharp and vibrant.
 
The green of the grass on the quad, the sleekness of the
briefcase in a professor’s hand, the soft morning shadows that the elm trees
cast onto the ground.

Even the students seemed somehow more put
together this morning, their jeans cleaner, their yoga pants less faded, their
backpacks newer.
 
I marveled at
their lives, their worries, the fact that they were thinking about tests and
summer clerkships, about grades and recommendations and not about murderers and
BDSM clubs.

“I’ll be done by eleven,” I said.

 
Noah nodded and then began to unbuckle his seatbelt.

 
“What are you doing?”
 
I asked.

“Going in with you.”

“Um, no.”
 
I shook my head.
 
“You can’t come to class with me.”
 
The thought of Noah walking into school with me was laughable.

“Not class, Charlotte.
 
I’ll wait in a study lounge or library.
Surely there’s some place I can work where I won’t disturb you.”

“Okay.”
 
I swallowed.
 
My
mouth was suddenly dry, and I reached for the handle of the car door.
 
“Can you just… can you wait a few
minutes before you get out?”
 
I
thought of the text Julia had sent me, about the reporter hanging out outside
of our apartment.
 
How could I be
sure the same thing wasn’t going to happen here?
 
I imagined a group of reporters lurking on the other side of
the quad, their cameras ready to get a shot of me with Noah.