What He Believes (6 page)

“Your shoulders
have so much tension, Charlotte,” he said as he worked.

“Whatever it is
that you’re doing is helping,” I said.
 

“Good.”
 
I could feel his cock nestled in between
the cheeks of my ass.
  
That,
coupled with the feel of his hands as he moved them
over my shoulders and down the small of my back caused my stomach to flip.
 

“Have you thought
about what kind of wedding you’d like?” Noah asked.

“You want to talk
about our wedding?” I asked, surprised.

“Are you implying
that because I’m a man, I can’t be interested in talking about our wedding?”

“No,” I said,
then
paused. “But is it strange to talk about our wedding
when we’re coming back from meeting a girl in jail?
 
A girl who killed her boyfriend, and was
then beaten by other inmates before being shipped off to the hospital?”

“That’s our work,
Charlotte.
 
This is our life.”

“Okay,” I said,
trying to tamp down the unsettled feeling I had at the ease with which he could
just move on from things and compartmentalize, the way he seemed to have moved
on from what had happened at Force.
 
 
“So you want to be involved
in the planning then?” I asked.
 
The
thought of Noah sitting in some room somewhere with a wedding planner, binders
of place settings and samples of cakes strewn out in front of him caused me to
giggle.

“Charlotte
Holloway,” he said.
 
“I’m surprised
that the thought of me helping to plan our wedding is amusing to you.”

“So you are
interested in helping?” prompted.

“Not in the
slightest,” he admitted as his hands moved over the back of my arms.

I smiled.
 
“Then why were you asking what kind of
wedding I wanted?”

“Because I want
you to be happy.
 
I want you to have
whatever you want, whatever the cost, whatever your dream.”

“I guess I haven’t
thought about it,” I said slowly.

“You don’t have to
have big wedding,” he said.
 
“If you
want something small, that’s fine with me, too.”

I didn’t say
anything, and a second
later,
his hands paused over my
back.
 
“You have thought about your
wedding?”

“Not really.”

“Why not?
 
Don’t all women plan their weddings in
their heads?”

“Noah,” I said,
rolling my eyes.
 
“That’s
sexist.”
 

He laughed as his
hands moved down over my buttocks.
 
He reached for the tube of cream and massaged it gently into my skin, the
sting from where he’d spanked me earlier immediately beginning to fade.
 

“So you’ve never
thought about what kind of wedding you want?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

I bit my lip,
wondering if I should tell him the truth.
 
It was dark in the room, the only light coming from the tiny reading
lamp that was sitting on his nightstand, and he couldn’t see my face, even
though his hands were moving over my body.
 

“I never thought I
would get married,” I admitted.
 

“You never wanted
to be married?”

“No, I wanted to
be married.”
 
I swallowed around the
rawness in my throat and closed my
eyes,
as if closing
them would make me less vulnerable to the words I was about to say.
 
“I never thought someone would love me
enough to ask me.”

His hands paused
on my ass, his thumbs resting between my thighs.
  
Then he began rubbing again, his
hands moving lower, over the back of my legs as he inched his body further down
mine.
 
“Why not?”
 

“I’m not
sure.”
 
I thought about it.
 
“I think I just figured that kind of
love wouldn’t exist for me.
 
Ever.”
  
I squeezed my eyes shut tighter as
I remembered high school and even college, what those years had been like.
 
The tiny girls, the ones with the small
waists and blonde hair, the ones who were cheerleaders or athletes or had rich
parents were the ones who ended up with the most attention from the boys.

I’d been smart
enough to know that high school wasn’t forever, but even in college, it had
been the same thing.
 
I’d had men
interested in me, but not with the kind of all-consuming passion I wanted them
to feel for me and vice versa.

Not until Noah had
I known what that felt like.

We lapsed into
silence for a few moments as Noah finished massaging me, moving down the back
of my ankles before finishing up at my feet.

“Turn over,” he
said.
 

I did as he said,
turning over onto my back.
 
He slid
back up my body so that he was straddling me around my stomach, and then he
began massaging my breasts.
 
I felt
him growing hard through his thin pajama pants, and I wondered how he could be
ready to go again so quickly – we’d had sex at our office earlier, and
then of course what we’d done in that building on the prison grounds.

And yet his cock
was rock hard.

He finished
rubbing my breasts, moved down to my stomach, his hands moving over the inside
of my thighs, and down my legs.

My body tingled,
electricity zapping through me, soon replaced with
a heady
warmth that left my muscles feeling loose and relaxed.

Noah lay down next
to me and I turned onto my side.

He took my hand in
his and scratched my palm lightly.
 
“I don’t like thinking about you like that,” he said.

“Like what?”

“Sad.”

“I wasn’t sad
about it.
 
I just took it as a
fact.”

“I want you to
always feel as if you are worthy of love.
 
You are the most amazing woman I’ve ever met in my life, the most
beautiful, the kindest,
the
smartest.
 
You are everything I ever could have
dreamed and more.”

My first thought
was to refute the compliment, to tell him
I
wasn’t
all those things
.
 
But like when he told me I was beautiful, I could see that he believed
what he was saying. Which meant I did, too, somehow.

I nodded as his
fingers continued lazily tracing my palm.

I closed my eyes,
enjoying the feeling of contentment that was finally flowing through me after
I’d chased after it all night.

“Noah?” I asked.

“Yes?” he murmured
drowsily.

“Tell me about
Nora.”

I felt his body
stiffen next to mine, and that familiar wave of fear pulsed through me, the
fear I always felt whenever I pressed him about something.
 
That he was going to shut down, that he
was going to push me away, that if I pushed him too hard and too fast, he might
shut down for good.

“Charlotte,” he
started.
 
“It’s been a long day.”

“I know.”
 
I took his hand in mine and kissed his
open palm.
 
“But I don’t know
anything about your past, Noah.”

“You know about
Audi.”

“Barely.”
 

I waited a beat,
listening to him
breathe
.
 
I, on the other hand, couldn’t breathe,
waiting for him to say something.
 
I
braced myself, expecting him to talk about how amazing Nora was, how beautiful,
how perfect.
 
I regretted asking
– what could he possibly tell me that would make me feel any better?
 
I was never going to be able to live up
to the memory of a dead woman.
 
It
was impossible.

“Nora never
trusted me,” he said.

“What?’” I asked,
surprised.
 
I propped myself up on
my elbow and looked at him.

“She didn’t trust
me,” he said.
 
“She said she did,
but she never completely gave herself to me.”
 
His eyes were open now, the two of us on
our sides, gazing at each other while he spoke.
 
I could make out his features in the dim
light of the reading lamp, so strong and yet so vulnerable.

“Oh,” I said, not
sure exactly what I was supposed to say to that.

“Charlotte.”

“Yes?”

“I never thanked
you.”

“For what?”

“For believing in
me.”

“When?”

“When everyone
thought I was murderer.
 
You stood
by my side.
 
You never doubted me.”

I almost laughed
out loud.
 
Was he kidding?
 
Of course I’d doubted him.
 
I’d doubted him almost constantly.
 

“I did doubt you,
though,” I said.

“No.
 
If you’d doubted me,
really
doubted me, you would have left.”
 
His fingers intertwined with mine, and the connection between us was so
powerful it took my breath away.
 
“You are the only person who has never given up on me.
 
And you have no idea how much that means
to me.”

“I love you,” I
whispered.
 
“I love you so much.”

“I love you too,”
Noah
said, his voice thick with emotion.

There was a beat
of silence, and in that beat I felt the bond between us burn so bright that I
could feel it surrounding me, all consuming.
 

And then, just
like that, the bond burned even brighter and burst into flames.

Noah flipped me onto
my stomach, his weight pressed on top of me as he pulled off the cotton pajama
pants he was wearing.

He pulled on my
ponytail and slid his hard cock along the crack of my ass.
 
Then slowly, very slowly, he began to
work his way inside of me.
 
I gasped.
 
He’d fucked me in the ass before, but it
still felt like the first time as my body resisted him, the idea that I would
ever be able to take him there seemingly impossible.

I felt myself
stretching out around him, along with the sensation of my body fighting him
until his dick pushed further in, past that ring of tightness, filling me.

“Charlotte,” he
groaned.
 
“Fuck, Charlotte, you feel
so good.”

I relaxed my body
around him, my pussy already flooding with wetness.
 
“Keep your legs together,” he commanded,
and then he smacked my ass as he began fucking me.
 

I did as he said.

“Does it feel good,
baby?”

“Yes,” I
gasped.
 
It did feel good.
 
It felt amazing, his dick stretching me
out as he
pistoned
his hips into me.
 
The rawness of what he was doing, the
animalistic nature of his need, and yes, the fact that I knew he was using me
sexually to work out his emotions, excited me.

“Tell me where my
cock is.”

“In my ass.”

He yanked on my
hair, hard.
 
“Again.”

“Your cock is in
my ass.”

“What am I doing?”

“Fucking my ass,”
I gasped.
 

He pumped into me
harder, one hand on the small of my back, holding me still, the other holding
my ponytail, using it as leverage to get deeper into my hole.

His nails dug into
the skin on my hip, holding me tight, not letting me even
move
the slightest bit.
 
He was in charge
of me, of my body, of my every movement, and I was more than happy to give him
that control, to let him take my body and use it for his pleasure.

“Your asshole is
so tight, baby,” he groaned.
 
“I’m not
going to last much longer.”

“Come in me,” I pleaded.
 
The thought of his cum inside of me, of
the sticky warmth filling me, making me his in my most private area was enough
to almost make me orgasm myself.

“You are mine.”

“Yes.”

“I own you.”

“Yes.”

“Say it.”

“You own me.”

He moaned again
and thrust into me harder, excited by my words.

“I’m yours,
Noah.
 
You own me.
 
I’m yours.”

His fingers pulled
at my hips, every thrust seemingly pushing deeper inside of me.

He came, shooting
a hot load of cum into me, and the sensation of that, along with his dick
buried in my asshole, along with the knowledge that I’d given him complete
control of my body, caused me to orgasm at the same time, so hard that after
I’d reached my crescendo, I was left a shuddering mess.

He pulled out of
me and then pulled me close to him.

“Did I hurt you?”
he demanded.

“No.”

“I couldn’t stop
myself,” he said, and I knew he was talking about the part of him, the part
that needed to take his aggression out on me sexually whenever his emotions got
too much for him to bear.
 
“It’s
fucked up,” he said.
 
“I know it is,
I just… I can’t…”

His chest was
heaving, a thin sheen of
sweat
covering his torso.
 
I ran my hand down his body, letting my
fingers linger on the ridges of his muscles, marveling for the millionth time
that someone so sexy, so gorgeous could exist in real life, much less be mine.