Authors: Hannah Ford
I needed him.
The door to the office was closed, and I
knocked.
“Come in,” he said, sounding distracted.
He was on his cell phone, pacing back and forth
across the carpet, his face set in concentration.
His sleeves were rolled up, his jacket
off, his forearms muscular and tan.
His suit pants hugged his ass, and I couldn’t
help but admire his body as he crossed the room in front of me.
He was so gorgeous, so sexy, so in control.
And he was mine.
I resisted the urge to pinch myself, to
make sure this was real
life, that
this beautiful man
loved me and wanted to be with me.
And might be asking you to marry him tonight.
Butterflies swarmed my stomach at the thought,
imagining him down on one knee in some romantic restaurant, his face bright
with excitement.
I stood just inside the door, listening to him
yelling at someone on the other end of the line for not getting a brief to him
on time, ranting about how he was going to file a motion for a mistrial.
When he was finally done, he turned to me.
I expected him to be in a bad mood,
expected him to have a heavy darkness after what I’d just witnessed, but
instead, his face broke into a smile.
“You are a sight for sore eyes,” he said,
wrapping me in his arms and kissing me softly on the lips.
I felt myself melting into him, becoming a
puddle against his body, his arms pulling me close as the tension I’d been
feeling slid from my shoulders.
“How was your day?” he asked me.
“It was fine.”
I swallowed, wondering when and how I
should bring up the letter.
“How
was yours?”
“Brutal,” he said, releasing me and returning
to his desk.
“The phone has been
ringing off the hook.
Apparently almost
getting killed is good for business.”
He glanced down at his computer, running his eyes over a document on the
screen.
“And then there are the
reporters.”
“I know,” I said.
“There were a bunch of them waiting outside
your office.”
“Did they bother you?” he asked, glancing up
sharply.
“Not really,” I said.
“I mean, they yelled questions at me,
but they didn’t… they weren’t aggressive or anything.”
“Good.”
He shut his laptop and grabbed his coat off the back of his desk.
He crossed the room to me and pulled me
to him, his hand resting on my hip.
“I missed you today, Charlotte.
You have no idea how much I’m looking forward to moving on from all of
this.”
He kissed me again, his hand
sliding down over my ass.
I felt my
body responding to his touch, the way his mouth felt against mine, the way he
tasted, the smoothness of his skin, the sensation of his tongue rubbing against
mine.
“Ready to go?” he asked when he finally pulled
away.
His tone was light, his body language relaxed
and easy-going.
There was no sign of the horror that had
happened at Force, no indication that under his expensive suit were stitches
and staples holding his skin together because of something a madman had done to
him, had done to
us.
I reached into my bag, my fingertips grazing
the top of the letter as I averted my gaze from his.
“What is it?” Noah asked, tilting my chin up
and forcing me to look him in the eye.
“Charlotte?
What’s wrong?”
I opened my mouth to tell him.
But then I imagined how the night would go.
Noah would get dark.
He would shut down.
Our dinner would be ruined.
He might even spend most of the time
brooding, or even worse, calling people he knew to get the letters to stop.
I didn’t want that.
We were finally getting to where I wanted to be,
where we could do the kinds of things normal couples did.
“It’s nothing,” I said.
“You sure?” he asked, his eyes searching mine.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
I swallowed and pulled my hand from my
bag.
I didn’t care what was in that
letter.
That letter had nothing to
do with
me or my future
.
It was just an ugly mark on my past,
something that had happened to me, not that was happening to me now.
What
was
happening to
me now was Noah and our life together.
The fact that he might be about to ask me to
marry him.
Was I going to put all of that in jeopardy because
of some stupid letter?
I didn’t want to lie to him.
But I didn’t want to risk our happiness more.
“Everything’s fine,” I said.
“Everything’s amazing.”
He smiled and slid my hand through his.
“We’ll take the elevator down to the garage,”
he said.
“To avoid the reporters.”
I nodded and let him lead me down the hall and
into the elevator.
We took it down
to the basement garage under Noah’s office building, and slipped into his car.
“I’ve never seen this one before,” I said.
“You haven’t seen many of my cars,” he replied
matter-of-factly, like it was the most natural thing in the world to own more
than one vehicle in a city like New York, where it could cost four figures a
month just to park one car, let alone several.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
He pulled out onto the street, turning the car
expertly as he smoothly joined the flow of traffic that was heading uptown.
“To dinner.”
“I know to dinner,” I said.
“But where?”
The side of his mouth twitched into a half
smile.
“You are awfully inquisitive
tonight, Ms. Holloway.”
“You’re awfully secretive tonight, Mr. Cutler,”
I teased back.
He smiled at me, but I saw the look that
crossed his face.
Apprehension?
Excitement?
My stomach
flipped and flopped.
Could he
really be about to ask me to marry him?
I thought of him down on one knee, slipping a
ring on my finger, promising to stay with me forever.
I shivered.
“You cold?” Noah asked.
“No.”
I shook my head.
“No, I’m
fine.”
He brought me to Le
Meilleur
,
an exclusive French fusion restaurant in the middle of Midtown.
It was on the top floor of its building,
the expansive windows giving the restaurant three hundred and sixty degree
views of the city.
The
maître’d
nodded to Noah in greeting before whisking us away
to a table in front of the windows.
Noah held my chair out for me, and the maitre’d
slipped away.
I glanced around the opulent restaurant, with
its circular tables, crisp linens, and crystal chandeliers.
The lights were set low, and the sun was
just setting, casting a
rosy
glow
over the room.
Candles burned on each table, their flames
dancing.
The room was huge, and the sweeping views of
the city made it seem even bigger than it was, like there was no end to the
restaurant, like it bled into the city, becoming one with the buildings and the
sky around it.
I picked up my napkin and set it carefully in
my lap.
“Is this… is the restaurant closed?” I asked.
“What?”
“There’s no one else here.”
“I bought it out.”
“You bought out the entire restaurant?”
“Yes.”
“Oh.”
I swallowed, not even able to comprehend how much something like that
must have cost.
I wasn’t a foodie –
I didn’t have the money or the interest -- but even I knew about Le
Meilleur
.
It
was insanely expensive, and insanely hard to get into.
There’d been an article about it in New York Magazine
a couple of months ago, touting the chef and declaring it New York’s most
exclusive hotspot.
There was a
waiting list of over a year for a reservation.
For Noah to
have
bought
out the restaurant must have cost him tens of thousands of
dollars.
It was the kind of thing he would only have done
if it were a special night.
The kind of night you would remember forever.
The kind of night you would get engaged.
My pulse pounded so hard I could feel it in the
hollow of my throat, and I grabbed my glass of water and took a long sip in an
effort to calm myself.
Noah leaned back in his chair and grinned at me
wickedly, his eyes sparkling.
“What?”
I asked.
“Nothing.”
“It must be something.”
“I was just thinking about the last time we
were out eating together.
Do you
remember that?”
“Of course I remember it.
You got arrested on the way out.”
He shook his head, like that was all a distant
memory, and not something that had just come to a horrible conclusion only a
few days ago.
“I was thinking about
what we did in the bathroom.”
Heat flooded my body.
I remembered that, too.
The
way I’d knocked on the door and offered myself to him, the way I’d gotten down
on my knees and sucked his cock, how hard he’d fucked me, holding me against
the door, his pelvis pounding into me.
“Do you remember that, Charlotte?” he asked,
and his hand was on my knee, moving up, pushing the bottom of my dress up a
tiny bit.
“Yes.”
I swallowed as his fingers moved over my skin in soft, slow swirls.
“Did you like that?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, sir.”
My pulse pounded harder, my breathing becoming
more pronounced.
I could feel the
heat on my cheeks.
I loved the way
he had fucked me last night, the way he’d
moved
inside
of me, the way he’d made
love to me.
But there was a part of
me that needed this too, a part of me that wanted to connect with him in this
powerful way, that wanted him to control me, to dominate me, to spank me, to
force me.
To give him total control over my body was
something that made me feel close to him.
The waiter returned with drinks, pouring a
bubbly
moscato
into my glass and setting a tumbler
full of something dark and amber in front of Noah.
“Should you be drinking that?” I asked Noah
when the waiter was gone.
“Why shouldn’t I be?”
“Because of your painkillers.”
They’d given him a script for
painkillers at the hospital with strict instructions to stay on top of his
pain, to make sure he took them when needed, and to call if he needed refills.
“I’m not taking any painkillers.”
“What?” I asked, surprised.
He shrugged.
“I haven’t needed them.”
I opened my mouth to protest.
Of course he needed them.
There was no reason for him not to need
them.
His body had been through a
devastating trauma, a major
surgery,
he’d been
stitched back together and given blood.
Of course there was pain.
But then I realized his need for control must
have been stronger than his need to get rid of the pain.
The waiter was setting the first course down in
front of us now, a
mesclun
salad with fennel and a
crisp
parmesan
crouton.
Noah was already moving on, talking about his
day at work, asking me if I was going back to school tomorrow, if maybe I
should call and talk to them about what happened.
The thought of going back to school was
panic-inducing
.
How
could I go back there with everyone knowing what had happened to me?
But not going back obviously wasn’t an
option.