What He Needs (What He Wants, Book Four) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance)

What
He Needs (What He Wants, Book Four)

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 couldn’t stop thinking about her.
 
Her eyes.
 
Her skin.
 
The
way her body felt against mine.
 
It
was disconcerting, how I couldn’t get her out of my head.
 

My morning run was the time I used to
quiet my mind, to block out all the noise of the city and the world and my own
obsessive thoughts.
 

But she kept creeping in.

And I couldn’t stop it.

I ran faster, trying to escape her, but
it was no use.
 
My thoughts drifted
to last night, how those men were looking at her in the club as I led her to
the basement.
 
They’d been salivating
over her breasts and that gorgeous round ass of hers, and she’d had no
idea.
 
I’d wanted to fuck her right
there, right in front of them, to show them that she was mine.
 
But I was too protective of her for
that.
 
I didn’t even like that they
got to see her in her sexy little dress.
 
The thought of them looking at her body made me boil
with jealousy.

She was so curvy that no matter what she
was wearing, she was going to
become
 
the
fantasy of every man
 
she crossed paths with.
 
I was going to have to set some rules
about how she could dress in public.
 
I couldn’t stop men from staring at her completely, but I could
certainly make it more difficult.

My dick twitched as I remembered how she
was afraid she wasn’t enough for me.
 
The fact that she was worried about this already, after just one session
at the club, made my cock hard.
 
I
couldn’t wait to explore her body, to push her, to tie her, to spank her, to
fuck her and take her in every way she could even dream possible.

I picked up my pace, trying to channel my
sexual energy into something physical, but it didn’t even take the edge off.

When I got back to my apartment, she was
lying in my bed, her hair spread in a halo on the pillow.
 
Her face was peaceful, the covers in a
tangle around her body.
 
She’d
slept naked, and it took every ounce of self-control I had not to pull the
covers off her, push her legs up and bury my face in her tight little
cunt.
 
Her pussy was soft and
smooth and tasted like honey.

She’d been asking questions last night,
about why I needed the things I needed.
 
I wanted to let her in, wanted to give her the answers she so
desperately wanted.

I was beginning to realize that I would
do anything to keep her close to me, to make sure I could have her near me
whenever I wanted.
 
And if that
involved letting her in, I would have to find a way to do that.

My heart pulsed faster in my chest, as
much at the sight of her long shapely legs and pouty little lips as the fact
that I might have to let my walls down.

The thought itself was a threat,
terrifying in its intensity.

If I let her in, what would happen? I
asked myself.

She might not understand.

She might leave.

She might get scared.

She might see you for what you really
are.

A monster.

Someone who shouldn’t be loved.

She’ll leave you.

Just like you deserve.

Charlotte

Strangulation was a horrible way to
die.
 
The victim was aware of
everything that was happening until their very last breath.
 
There was usually a struggle as they clawed
and fought and raged against their attacker until finally they were pulled down
into the abyss of unconsciousness.
 

I’d read about it back when I wanted to
be a doctor, when I would spend hours in the public library, forcing myself to
read study after study about the ways people could die.
 
I learned about how people would stop
eating as they got closer to death, how they would become more and more tired,
about how you should never say something around a dying person that you didn’t
want them to hear, since hearing was the last of the senses to go.
 
I forced myself to learn all about
death, because I was terrified of dying.
 

And it had worked, at least a little, to
calm my fear.

But when I saw Katie’s body lying there
on the ground, her body covered in leaves, her face calm, her lips blue, I
almost threw up.
 
I dry heaved into
the bushes, thankful that Professor Worthington couldn’t see me.
 
He was over on the other side of the
trees, talking to a police officer.

We were right off the jogging
path
in the park, and it was that weird time of morning
where the early birds, the people who got up at five, six, seven, even eight or
nine, had finished their runs.
 
It
was also unseasonably cold, and so it was relatively quiet for a Sunday
morning.
 
But there were still
people walking on the path, and I ran over to one of the police officers
who
’d blocked off the area with yellow police tape.

“You should cover her body,” I said.
 
“She can’t just be… she shouldn’t just
be visible like that.”

I was surprised I’d been allowed to get
as close as I had.
 
This was an active
crime scene, and the police were supposed to be taking every precaution
necessary to make sure it wasn’t compromised.
 
I’d read about things like that happening in my case
studies, police letting crime scenes become a trampled-on mess, so that no one
could trust the evidence that had been collected.
 
I’d thought those were the exception, but now I was
beginning to realize how easily it could happen.

I shook my head as the police officer
just kind of shrugged at me, obviously blowing me off as a concerned citizen
and not someone who knew what they were talking about.
 
It made my blood boil, and any
discomfort I’d had at seeing Katie’s body was replaced with righteous anger.

I stomped through the leaves over to
Professor Worthington.
 
“The police
are totally screwing everything up,” I declared when I saw him.
 
“They haven’t even covered the body.”

Professor Worthington looked at the
police officer he was talking to, who held his hands up.
 
“We were told not to touch anything
until homicide got here,” the officer said.
 
“Not my call.”

Professor Worthington shook his head and
led me a few feet down the path, out of the officer’s earshot.
 
“Jesus, Charlotte,” he said.
 
“You need to learn to keep your mouth
shut.
 
This is a police
investigation into a murder, not some excuse for you to come down here and
start playing Big Shot Lawyer.”

I frowned.
 
“That’s not what I was doing,” I said.
 
“I was trying to make sure that none of
the evidence got tampered with.
 
There’s a dead body in full view of anyone who’s – “

“They’ve cordoned off the other side of
the path,” he said.
 
“No one’s
being allowed down here.”

“I got through no problem.”

“Yeah, well, you must have been let
through right before they blocked it off.”
 
He pointed down to the other side of the path, where sure
enough, there
were roadblocks set
up.
 
Two policemen stood on one side of
them, directing people to either turn around or veer off onto the side trail so
they could loop back around to the other side of the park.

“Oh,” I said, feeling slightly stupid.

My phone buzzed with a text.

I looked down.

Noah.

Awake?
 
Been thinking about fucking you all morning.

I hesitated.
 
Obviously, he hadn’t heard about Katie.
 
Which was kind of weird.
 
Shouldn’t Professor Worthington have
told Noah that his secretary was dead?
 
Unless… was it possible Noah knew, and was just acting like everything
was okay?
 

“Professor,” I said.
 
“Did you… I mean
,
does Mr. Cutler know about Katie?”

“No.”
 
He shook his head.
 
“I didn’t want to tell him until we had more information.”

“But don’t you think we should have
gotten in touch with him immediately?
 
It will be imperative he has an alibi.”
 
I said a silent prayer that Katie had been killed last
night, while we were at the BDSM club.
 
It would be embarrassing to have to be Noah’s alibi, but I couldn’t have
been the only one who’d seen him there, and if it was a matter of proving
Noah’s innocence, well, then, I’d just have to deal with it.

If Katie had been killed this morning,
well… my breath caught in my throat. Noah had gone out for a jog.
 
Maybe right through this park.
 
He could have been in the vicinity of
the murder right when it had happened. Katie’s body hadn’t looked like it had
been
there
for a long time, but it was hard to tell
from the quick glace I’d gotten.

And then I remembered.
 
Katie
couldn’t
have been killed last
night.
 
Because I’d seen her name
on Noah’s caller ID when his phone rang.
 
My heart began to race, my pulse pounding in my ears.
 
What was it he’d said when he’d hung
up?
 
Something about how Katie had
been having a problem but that he was taking care of it?

It had been pretty late – so unless
Katie had decided to head out for a run in the middle of the night, it was most
likely she’d been killed this morning.

The taste of bile filled my mouth and my
stomach turned
inside-out
.
 
The thought of Noah killing someone made me want to wretch
again.
 
I started to feel queasy,
and I forced myself to take deep breaths.
 
I remembered Noah coming home this morning, in his running clothes,
taking a shower and then dressing in his suit before leaving for work.
 
Could he have killed Katie in that
time?
 
Killed her and then just
come home and gone to work like it was nothing?

I thought about last night, how he’d held
me close, how his lips had felt against the back of my neck, how his arms had
felt around me.
 
Heat flooded my
body as I remembered how he rushed over to my apartment as soon as he’d heard
what had happened with Josh.

The thought that I could have been
sleeping next to a murderer, that I could have been
falling
for a murderer, made me sick.

You’re not falling for him, Charlotte,
I told myself.
 
You barely even know the guy.
 
He took you to a BDSM club and gave
some vague excuses about how he couldn’t let you get close to him because of
his emotional barriers.
 
Don’t
confuse that for real intimacy.

But it
did
feel like real intimacy.

It felt so intimate that I let the girl
part of me take over, the part of me that was a woman who was falling for a
man.
 
I ignored the law student
part of me, the part that was at an active crime scene, the part that was
supposed to be listening to Professor Worthington.

 
I knew it was wrong, but I texted Noah.

Your secretary’s dead.
 
They found her in the park.
 
Any idea
who
might have done it?

It probably wasn’t the best way for him to
find out.
 
I could have been
more subtle
.
 
But I needed to know what he knew.

Where r u?
came
the reply.

In the park.
 
Answer the question.

“Charlotte,” Professor Worthington was
saying.
 
“I’m going to need you to
meet with me this afternoon.
 
We’re
going to have to start going over the police report, and find out when the
autopsy is scheduled.
 
We’ll have
to meet with Mr. Cutler, we’ll have to find out exactly where he was during the
time of Katie’s death.”
 
I wanted
to point out that was exactly what I’d just said, but I resisted.
 
Professor Worthington ran his fingers
through his hair and then looked over at me, his eyes sharp.
 
“Are you taking notes, Charlotte?
 
Or am I to assume that you have a
photographic memory?”