What He Desires (What He Wants, Book Five) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance)

What He Desires
 
(What He Wants, Book Five)

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 watched Charlotte turn and walk down
the hall toward my office, and I had to resist the urge to call her back to
me.
 
The thought of letting her go
to a meeting where that pervert Josh was going to be filled me with rage.
 
I was overcome with the need to protect
her, to wrap my arms around her, pull her into my bed, and never let go.

She’d managed to crack my armor, to get
me to let my guard down a little.
 
I’d even agreed to go to some party with her family.
 
The thought of it was already causing
me to want to retreat.

It was a battle inside of myself, this
desire to hold her close and keep her safe versus the urge to push her away as
soon as I let her in.
 
But she’d
made it clear it was what she expected, and the thought of losing her was
scarier than letting her in.
 
At
least, it was for now.

I heard her opening drawers in my office,
looking for a charger for her phone and the whole thing was so god damn
domestic that I almost laughed out loud.
 

But then the panic set in.

She was in my apartment, sleeping in my
bed, and it felt
right.
 
I thought about taking her to dinner tonight, about going over the rules
for what she could wear, eat, stay.
 
I couldn’t wait to get her to submit to me, to bring her back here and
take her in any way I wished.
 
She’d responded well to the spanking, and I was going to push her
further tonight.
 
She wanted to
please me, and I was ready to teach her just how to do that.

The thought of it made me rock hard, and
I flashed back to an image of her on her knees at the club the other night,
crawling over to me, ready to do whatever I asked.

She needed to be careful out with that
asshole Josh.
 
I put my iPad away
and went to remind her of that fact, to make sure she stayed safe and
alert.
 
I decided to implement a
new rule
-
 
she
would have to text me every hour on the hour, and if I didn’t hear from her, I
would come and find her.

When I reached the office, she was
sitting on the floor looking down at something in her lap.
 
Her hair fell over her face, her legs
curled under her.
 
She looked small
and vulnerable, and I wanted to wrap her up in my arms and carry her back to my
bed, lock her away and never let her out of my sight.

“Charlotte,” I said.
 
“Look at me.”

She looked up at me, her face set in
stone.
 
Her eyes were blazing with
something unexpected – anger.

She picked up the folder that was in her
lap.
 
“You want to explain this?”
she asked.

I took a step closer, until I could see
what she was referring to.
 
It was
my file on Katie Price -- the pictures of her, the record of her movements, the
places she’d gone, the times she’d gone there.
 
Each one meticulously recorded and catalogued, right down to
the minute.

“Why were you following Katie?” Charlotte
demanded.
  
“Tell me.”

I had to be careful.

If I said the wrong thing, I could lose
her.

And that was unacceptable.

So I began to speak, choosing my words
carefully.

Charlotte

“Well?” I demanded, standing up and
thrusting the folder at Noah.
 
“What is this?”

“Charlotte,” he said, his voice even,
“you weren’t meant to find that.”

“Yeah, no shit I wasn’t meant to find
it.
 
It’s probably not ideal for
the woman you’re fucking to find a bunch of evidence that shows you were
stalking someone who was just murdered.”

He shook his head and moved over to me,
took the folder from my hands and paged through the documents.
 
He still didn’t say anything, and it
was infuriating.
 
I had been in
such a good mood, thinking I was finally getting through to him, and then just like
that, my hopes were completely dashed.
 
Again.

 
It was like being on a seesaw, flying up into the air, only
instead of coming down, it felt like I was being throw off into the air before
crashing straight onto the ground.

“Are you going to tell me what the hell
is going on?”
 
My voice was halfway
between panic and desperation, with a dose of shrill added in for good
measure.
 
My heart was pounding,
adrenaline pulsing through my body, the fight or flight instinct in full
effect.
 
I wasn’t sure if I should
slap him across the face, or run out of there and never talk to him again.

If this wasn’t proof he was a murderer, I
didn’t know what was.
 
I wasn’t
sure why I was even standing there, asking for an explanation.

He kept going through the pictures, page
by page, maddeningly slowly, until I felt like I wanted to scream.

When he was done, he slid them carefully
back into the folder and placed the folder back in his filing cabinet.

“Charlotte,” he said.

“Stop saying my name.”
 
I hated the way it made me feel,
hearing him
say
my name like that.
 
It felt too intimate, too close, the
way he said it, like he knew me.
 
When the truth was, he didn’t know me at all.
 
And I didn’t know him.
 
This whole thing we’d been doing, the sex and the games and the control
– that’s all it was.
 
Just
games.

Dangerous, risky games that might cost me
my life.

“I was following Katie,” Noah said.

I closed my eyes, and my breath started
coming in rapid gasps, so fast that I was afraid I was going to have a panic
attack. I hadn’t had a panic attack since those last days with my dad, since he
was lying in bed dying, and I was there with him, all alone, not sure what to
do. I took in a long deep breath through my nose, counting to three beats,
then
holding it for three beats before exhaling for three
beats.
 
It helped a little bit, but
as soon as I was stopped counting, my breath started coming fast again.

“Charlotte, please,” Noah said.
 
“Let me get you some water.
 
Sit down.
 
You need to let me explain – ”

“Don’t,” I said.
 
“No.
 
I’m done with this.”

Noah stood there, his eyes boring into
mine, blazing with fury.
 
And something else, something right below the surface.

Hurt.

He was hurt I didn’t trust him, that I
didn’t believe him.
 
But I was done
playing these crazy games.

Noah Cutler was a murderer.

And I needed to stay far, far away from
him.

***

The day had turned overcast and dreary,
and I walked fast toward the subway, ignoring Noah’s car, which was parked in
front of his apartment.

I ducked into the bodega on the corner
and bought myself a cheap phone charger, the kind that would probably last me
two days before breaking, and a bottle of water.
 
As soon as I was out on the sidewalk I opened the bottle and
gulped down half of it.
 
A second
later, my mouth was dry
again,
my lips like sandpaper,
my tongue thick and heavy.

My heart was still beating rapidly, even
faster now that I’d been walking, and I could feel a tiny bit of sweat starting
to pool in the small of my back.
 
I
wasn’t wearing a coat, but I was still hot, even though the day wasn’t particularly
warm.

I drank some more water and forced myself
to slow my pace as I walked.
 
There
was a sharp pain starting in my side, almost like a stitch, and even though I’d
slowed down it began to take over my entire stomach, fading and bleeding into a
dull ache.

As I stepped down into the subway
station, I felt suddenly claustrophobic, like I was stepping into a coffin.
 
Get
it together, Charlotte,
I told myself.
 
Relax.

A second later, I was being swallowed up
by the crowd as we filed into the subway car. I took a seat in between a woman
with a yellow umbrella and a college kid wearing a pair of jeans and a
sweatshirt.
 
The ride to campus was
at least twenty minutes, but I had no memory of it when I stepped out of the
car.
 
It was like my mind was
disconnected from reality.

When I got to campus, I realized I was
going to have to go to class tomorrow.
 
I had this whole life, this whole world that I’d worked so hard to build
– getting good grades in high school, getting good grades in college,
getting into law school.
 
Up until
a couple of days ago, school and the law had been my life.
 
But then I had become consumed with
Noah.

Was I becoming one of those women?
 
The politicians’ wives you saw standing
by them even as they admitted they’d been hiring prostitutes or posting naked
pictures of
themselves
all over the internet.
 
The women who married men in jail, who
stood by their husbands and insisted they could never kill someone even when
the evidence proved otherwise.

There was a thin line between standing by
someone you knew wasn’t guilty, and getting so consumed with a man that you
couldn’t see the truth.
 
There was
also a big difference between
me and those women
.
 
Those women had been married to those
men, had built lives with them, had houses and children and photo albums full
of memories.
 
They had money and
power and success at risk -- their whole lives would implode if their husbands
were found guilty of whatever charges had been lobbied against them.

I had nothing at stake here.
 
Noah and I hadn’t built anything except
a sexual relationship.
 
The fact that
he’d agreed to go with me to my stepfather’s birthday party, which at the time
had seemed like such a huge victory, now seemed ridiculous and petty.
 
A birthday party?
 
That wasn’t any kind of promise.
 
That was a joke.

I was done.

Done with Noah Cutler.

I felt like I kept saying that to myself,
and every time, I’d get swept back up.
 
But not this time.
 
This time it was real.
   
I felt like a junkie finally coming out of a
haze.
 
I was seeing my drug for
what it really was – a man who had nothing to offer me except heartache
and lies.

I ran up the stairs in front of Hinton
Hall,
then
headed toward Professor Worthington’s
office.
 
I paused outside the door,
wondering if I should tell Professor Worthington I wasn’t going to be able to
work on the case anymore.
 
Ever
since I’d been working with Noah, my whole life had turned upside down.
 

Maybe it was time to cut my losses and
move on.

Fuck that.
 
You worked hard to get into law
school,
you worked hard to even be able to go to
college.
 
You promised your dad and
yourself you wouldn’t end up like your mother, that you’d make something of
yourself.
 
And you’re not going to
let some man you just met take that away from you.

I opened the door and walked in.

The office was small, but Professor
Worthington had made the most of the space, with a long conference table in the
middle of the room, and a flowery green plant in the corner.
 
A
keurig
coffee machine sat on a table near the door, and a bookshelf with volumes of
law books was pushed up against the opposite wall.

Josh sat at the conference table, a cup
of coffee sitting in front of him.
 

“Hey,” he said when he saw me.
 
“The professor’s not here yet.”