What He Hides (What He Wants, Book Seven) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (4 page)

When we reached the end of the hallway,
the corridor forked off into three different tunnels – one tunnel was
right in front of us, one was to our left, and one was to our right.
 
All of them were lit with the same dim
flickering
light,
the walls painted in a swirling
abstract pattern of black and blood red that made me feel dizzy.
 
As we got closer, the sound of
something scurrying came out of tunnel to the right.
 
A man in a gimp suit came skittering by, crawling on his
hands and knees as he passed by.

I almost screamed, not because he was in
a gimp suit, but because it was so shocking and surprising to have the still,
almost eerie quiet broken so suddenly.

Noah turned and led me down the hallway
to the far left, and I was relieved that we weren’t going down the hall the
gimp had just come from.

There were doors off this hall too, and
the hall became twistier, branching off into what seemed like a million
different directions.
 
Noah took
turn after turn, and I had the sensation of being led further underground,
almost like the floor was angled downward.

I wanted to ask him where we were going,
where he was taking me, but I forced myself to trust.

After what seemed like forever, I finally
heard the distant sound of music, a slow sensuous rhythm that seemed to
reverberate off the walls.
 
In the
distance, I could see a clearing, a huge room with voices and a spotlight that
seemed to be moving lazily over the crowd.

As we got closer, one of the doors off
the hall opened and a man wearing leather chaps and holding a whip came walking
out, followed by a line of girls, their hands shackled together as they walked
single file.

I watched them as they passed –
each of them was dressed in a gold loincloth with tiny gold tassels over their
nipples and nothing else.
 
Their
skin had a translucent look to it, and their bodies glittered under the
lights.
 
All of them wore matching
gold eye shadow and dark eyeliner.

I studied their faces as they went by,
but their expressions were blank.

“Where are they going?” I whispered to
Noah, afraid that if I talked too loud, I’d be forced to join them.

Noah glanced over, disinterested, like a
line of almost-naked handcuffed women was an every day occurrence.
 
“To the auction,” he said
matter-of-factly.

“They’re getting auctioned off?”

“Yes.”
 
He looked at me with amusement.
 
“Would you like to join them?”

I shook my head no quickly, and Noah
laughed.
 
“Come on,” he said.
 
“We’re almost there.”

He pulled me toward the music, and once
we were in the main room, I breathed a sigh of relief, happy to be away from
the winding corridors that felt like a basement maze.

There was a built man with a mustache
sitting at the front of the open doorway, and he stood up when he saw us.
 
His head was freshly shaved, his arms a
sleeve of tattoos.
 
When he saw
Noah, he nodded and let him pass into the room.

It was filled with people, men and women
of all shapes and sizes, some of them in costumes or masks, most of them
dressed in black. There were scuffed metal tables and folding chairs scattered
throughout the room, and the word FORCE was written in huge black letters
across the low ceiling.
 
I stayed
close to Noah as we pushed through the crowd.
 
The men in the room watched me as we passed, their eyes
moving up my body, ogling my breasts, my legs, my ass.

Noah led me to a row of doors that were
lined up across the back of the
room.As
we went, we passed a beautiful woman spread out on a table.

She was on top of a man, spread eagle, as
he moved his cock in and out of her ass.
 
He held her hands tight behind her, keeping her pinned so she couldn’t
move.
 
Another man, muscular and
tattooed, had unbuttoned his pants and pulled his cock out, getting ready to
enter her pussy.
 
I averted my eyes
right before he did, but I could hear the woman’s moan, a guttural mix of pain
as pleasure as
she was filled by two cocks
.

My heart began pounding again, and the
spotlight passed over the room, making me feel slightly dizzy.

“Can I … I need to sit down, I think,” I
said to Noah.

He nodded and quickened his pace, pulling
me through a door at the back of the club.
 
It was quieter back here, and less dungeon-like, with a
leather couch pushed up against one wall and a gold wardrobe standing in the corner.

“Are you okay?” Noah asked.

“Yes.”
 
I nodded.

“Here, sit down.”
 
He led me to the couch and I sat
down.
 

He sat down next to me.
 
“Do you want to leave?”

I shook my head no.
 
Although now that I was here, I had no idea
how I was going to even begin to find Audi James.
 
With all the corridors and hallways and paths, it was going
to be impossible.
 
There were
people in masks, people in costumes, their faces obscured…it would be hard
enough to find someone in this place if no one was wearing masks and you knew
exactly where you were going.
 

“I want to give you something,” Noah
said.
 
He reached into his pocket
and pulled out a small black box.
 
He handed it to me, his eyes locking on mine, the electricity between us
almost palpable.
 
“I wanted to get
you something to commemorate this night.”

I opened the box slowly. A delicate
diamond bracelet stared back at me, its stones shimmering in the light.
 
I gasped.

“Do you like it?” Noah asked, pulling it
out of the box and fastening it around my wrist.
 

“It’s beautiful,” I breathed.
 
I had never owned something so
gorgeous.
 
All the jewelry I had
was
purchased at Target or cheap accessory stores, the kind
of jewelry that turned your skin green and ended up rusting.

I turned my wrist, staring at the
delicate chain that looped the stones together.

“Not as beautiful as you.”
 
Noah raised my hand to his lips and
kissed the back of it softly.
 

“Thank you,” I said.
 
“Really, thank you.”
 

He tilted my chin toward him.
 
“Look at me,” he said.
 
“Really look at me when I tell you
this.
 
I know it’s not easy, being
with me.
 
But I want you to know
that you coming here with me tonight, it really does mean a lot to me.”

I nodded.
 
“It means a lot to me, too.”
 
Guilt was blooming in my chest, threatening to take over
every other emotion I was feeling.
 
How could I be here, with him, accepting this gift, and not tell him the
true reason I wanted to come here?

I couldn’t.
 

If I was willing to trust some stranger
on the phone more than I was willing to trust Noah, then I shouldn’t have been
here with him.

And that’s when I decided I wasn’t going
to try to find Audi James.

I was going to be here, completely, to
give myself to Noah in whatever way he wanted to take me.

Noah stood up and walked over to the side
of the room.
 
There was a small
wooden chest sitting on the floor, and he twirled the combination lock until it
popped open.
 
He took something out
of the chest before crossing the room back to me.

“How did you know the combination?” I asked.

“This is my room.”

“Your room?”

“Yes, Charlotte.
 
The rooms here are private, assigned to
different members.
 
You’re not
allowed to enter any room without being invited.”

I nodded, trying not to think about Noah
being a member here, trying not to think about all the other women he’d had in
this room.
 
Dani and Nora, of
course, the two women who’d been killed.
 
He’d met Dani at Force, and Nora had been his fiancé.
 
How many others?
 
Had he come here after work most
nights, picked a girl out from the crowd, brought her back here and done what
he wanted to her?
 
Had he attended
the auction, paid money for one of those beautiful girls with the dead eyes so
he could owe her for a night?

How was I different?
 
Was
I even different?
 
And if so, why?
 
It was still hard to wrap my brain
around the fact that Noah could have any woman he wanted and yet he chose to be
here with me.

Noah sat back down next to me and set a
book down on my lap.

It was a thin volume, but heavy, and
bound in black leather.

“What is this?” I asked.
 

“Open it,” he instructed.

I opened the book.
 
The first page was a title page, the
words written in a swirly calligraphy script, the letters sparkly gold and
slightly raised off the page.
 

“Contract of
Domination/Submission,”
it read.
 
“
To be entered into between Noah
Cutler and Charlotte Holloway.”

I ran my hand over the words, tracing the
loopy C of my name.
 
“Our
contract?” I asked.

“Yes.”
 
Noah took my hand and held it.
 
His touch was warm and comforting.
 
“I had this made the night I met you.”

I turned and looked at him, our eyes
meeting over the page.
 

“It outlines very specifically everything
I require of you,” he said.

I flipped through it, reading.

“…
sub
agrees that dom will be in charge of her diet…”

“…
sub
agrees not to travel on public transportation or put herself in situations
deemed unnecessarily dangerous…”

“…
sub
shall not socialize with persons that have not been approved by the dom…”

“…
sub
shall agree to a minimum of eight hours of sleep per night…”

“…
sub
shall be available to the dom at his discretion, whenever he requires…”

It went on like that, pages and pages of
rules and restrictions.
 
I bit my
lip, wondering what kind of person voluntarily signed her life over to another
person.
 

A person in love.
 
A person who wants to make the man she’s with happy.
 
A person who wants to go deep with that
person, to experience what it means to trust someone completely, to give
themselves over to someone fully, to explore their darkest desires as a couple.

“Charlotte,” Noah said, as if he could
sense my hesitation, “if you’re not ready…”

“I’m ready,” I said.
 
There was a pen attached to the book by
a golden tassel, and I gabbed it and signed my name in big letters.
 

Noah took the pen and did the same.

It was official now.

I belonged to him.

***

Noah shut the book and stood up.

The vibe in the room had changed, his
demeanor shifting from one of romance and concern to one filled with lust and
the need to control.

 
I had been so focused on reading the contract that I hadn’t
taken time to fully take in my surroundings, but now I was beginning to notice
other things in the room – there was the gold wardrobe in the corner, the
chest and the couch, but there was also what looked like a kneeling bench.
 
It was wooden and worn, with dings and
scratches all over it.
 
This wasn’t
like the other club we’d been to, with its posh exterior.
  
That had looked like a fancy
nightclub,
the truth of what it really was hidden deep
beneath the surface.
 
Here, at
Force, there was no question as to what people came for.

Noah shucked off the black sweater he was
wearing, exposing his flat abs and chiseled shoulders.
 
He looked at me sitting there on the
couch, his eyes blazing.

“Kneel,” he commanded, his voice low and
guttural.