What He Protects (What He Wants, Book Six) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance)

WHAT
HE PROTECTS (What He Wants, Book Six)

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.
 

Charlotte

It bothered me that I knew exactly how to
get to the police station.
 
In
fact, it almost seemed normal now, walking in and seeing the same receptionist
who had been there when Noah was questioned.

She was decidedly less friendly
today.
 
This time, there were no
private looks about how hot Noah was, no professional tone or polite
attitude.
 
She gave me a sigh when
she saw me, and acted put-out when I told her I was there to speak with someone
who’d just been arrested.
 

“Name?” she asked.

“Mine or the, um, sus—person’s?”

“Suspect’s.”

“Noah Cutler.”
 
I’m sure I was just being paranoid, but I felt like she
could somehow tell I had a personal interest in the case.

“Are you his lawyer?” she asked, looking
me up and down skeptically.
 
Not
that I could blame her.
 
I didn’t
look like a lawyer.

“No,” I said.
 
“I’m a law student.
 
But I’m part of his legal team.”

She shook her head.
 
“Did he call his lawyer?”

“Of course he called his lawyer.”
 
It wasn’t technically true.
 
I was the one who’d
 
called Professor Worthington, explaining
to him what had happened while I stood on a busy street corner.
 
He hadn’t seemed shocked or alarmed at
all – he just said ‘I’ll meet you there’ and then he’d hung up.

“Well, then you can wait over there,” the
receptionist said.
 
“Until the
lawyer
gets here.”

She said “lawyer” very pointedly, like
since I wasn’t one, I had no business being there.
 
I sighed and sat down in one of the folding chairs in the
lobby.
 
I rummaged through my bag
and pulled out a notebook.
 
But
there was nothing for me to make notes on.

I could have opened my iPad and tried to
catch up on my reading for school, but I was too antsy.
 
Noah had been arrested.
 
There was going to be a trial.
 
And evidence.
 
The prosecutor would dig deep into Noah’s life and ask him
all kinds of questions.

If anyone found out about our
relationship, I’d be subpoenaed.
 
They’d ask me about our sex life, if Noah had ever gotten rough with me,
if he’d ever hurt me.
 
And even
though he
hadn’t
ever
hurt me, I knew enough about the law to realize they would make it look like he
had.

The prosecutor would ply me with specific
questions, like if Noah had ever left marks on my wrists, if he’d ever spanked
me so hard it made my skin red.
 
And Noah
had
done those things -- not in the way
they’d try to paint it, but it wouldn’t matter.
 
They’d ask me, and they wouldn’t understand about the sexual
part of it, about the domination and submission.
 
Hell,
I
 
didn’t
even understand most of it.
 

If I lied, I could get arrested for
perjury.
 
And if that happened, I
could kiss my law career good bye.

What
a huge fucking mess,
I
thought to myself.
 
Why couldn’t I
have just fallen in love with some normal law student, the kind of guy who
would study hard and get good grades and then take some boring job in corporate
law?
 
Why did I have to get involved
with an older man, one with a penchant for BDSM and a tortured past?

I pulled out my phone and watched the
second hand on the clock icon slowly move around the screen, willing it to move
faster.
 
Professor Worthington
should have been here by now.
 
I
thought about calling him, but I didn’t want to be a pest or seem too eager.
Now that Noah had been officially arrested, it was even more important for me
to make sure I stayed involved in his case.

I got up and paced the room, because the
energy inside of me needed somewhere to go -- I was starting to feel like I was
going to scream.

“You know, he was probably taken to
Central Booking,” the receptionist piped up helpfully.

I turned around.
 
“Excuse me?”

“Central Booking.
 
It’s where they take people after
they’ve been arrested.
 
While they
wait to be arraigned.”

I took in a deep breath through my nose
and resisted the urge to scream at her for not telling me that sooner.
 
Obviously she knew I was waiting for
Noah and Professor Worthington -- I’d told her that when I’d gotten here.
 
So why would she let me sit here like
some kind of fool, wasting time when Noah wasn’t even here?
Although it wasn’t entirely her fault.
 
Of course I knew clients didn’t speak with their lawyers at the police
station, that once they were arrested and had their information recorded, they
were sent to Central Booking.
 
I
should have known better -- when Professor Worthington had said ‘I’ll meet you
there,’ he’d meant Central Booking -- but I was so frazzled I hadn’t thought of
it.
 
My total lack of forethought
definitely didn’t bode well for my law career.

Get
it together, Holloway,
I
told myself.

I ran outside and hailed a taxi while
looking up the address for Central Booking on my phone.
 
I had a frantic energy about me, and I
tried to force myself to calm down, but my hands were shaking as I opened the
door to the cab and gave the cabbie the address.

By the time we pulled up in front of
Central Booking, I’d calmed down a little, but not much.
 
There were a bunch of people loitering
on the steps of the building, smoking and talking on their cell phones.
 
Men in hoodies wandered around the
sidewalk, looking me up and down as I walked up the front steps.

 
I thought about calling Professor Worthington to ask if he
was here yet, ask him to come outside and walk me in, but then I told myself
there was no reason to be intimidated.
 
If I was going to be a lawyer, I was going to have to get used to doing
things like this.
 
And besides,
there were tons of cops right inside the front doors -- it wasn’t like anything
bad could happen to me here.
 
The
irony wasn’t lost on me – here I was, going inside to voluntarily look
for a man who’d been accused of murder, all the while being afraid of the people
outside.

No one gave me a hard time as I walked
past, all of them busy on their cell phones, probably calling lawyers or bail
bondsmen as they tried to help their relatives and friends on the inside.

The inside of Central Booking was nothing
like the police station.
 
At the
police station, even with the curt receptionist, you could sense a certain kind
of order, a certain kind of safety.
 
The people at the police station were there to fill out reports, or
answer questions, or provide information.
 
The police station hummed with activity, but it was a kind of controlled
activity.
 
You could tell whatever
was going on there was serious and somber, but at the same time, it had a
certain rightness to it that made it feel like it was the normal order of
society.

Whatever was happening at Central Booking
had nothing to do with normalcy. The walls were grey and the paint was peeling
badly, the linoleum scuffed and in serious need of repair. I could smell the
stench of urine and hear the clanging of bars coming from somewhere far away.
 
Down the hallway, about a hundred feet
or so, I could see the shadow of a man in handcuffs being led into a cell.
 

“I didn’t do that shit!
 
I’m high, man, I’m on the junk!” he was
screaming as two officers held onto him.
 
His skinny limbs went akimbo as he twisted and turned as the officers
threw him into a cell.
 
The sound
of groans followed the clink of the bars, the people already in the holding
cell obviously not approving of their new neighbor.

“Can I help you?” a uniformed office
asked from the other side of the metal detector.

“Yes,” I said.
 
“I’m here to see Noah Cutler.
 
I’m part of his legal team.”
 
I purposefully left out the part about me not being a
lawyer.
 
I wasn’t going to make
that mistake again.
 
I imagined
Noah back in that cell, crowded in with all those crazy people.
 
I wondered what would happen if his
mouth got him into trouble.
 
Would
they come after him?
 
Did they have
weapons in there?
 
Was it like
prison where you could get in fights and the corrections officers might not do
anything about it?

“Has he been arrested?” the officer asked
me.

“Yes,” I said.
 

“What was the date?”

“Um, today.
 
Just about an hour ago.”

The officer sighed and shook his
head.
 
“An hour ago?
 
Honey, no one gets out of Central
Booking in an hour.
 
Your client is
going to have to be arraigned before he’s even ready for bail, and that’s going
to be – ”

But before he could finish, Noah appeared
in front of us, looking no worse for the wear.
 
His coat was immaculate, his hair still perfectly styled,
his stride commanding and purposeful.

When he saw me, his face darkened.
 
“Charlotte,” he demanded.
 
“What are you doing here?”

“What am I doing here?” I asked.
 
“I came to find you!”
 
I looked behind him for and officer or
someone escorting him out, but there was no one.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said,
grabbing me by the arm and leading me out the door and down the stairs, through
the throng of people that were still congregating on the steps.
 

Once we were around the corner, he pulled
out his cell phone and put it to his ear.
 
“Jared,” he said.
 
“I’m
ready.”
  
He ended the call
and slid it back into his pocket.
 
“Charlotte, I told you to call Worthington, not to come down to Central
Booking.
 
Are you insane?”

I looked at him, aghast.
 
“Am I insane?
 
No, Noah, I’m not
insane.
 
I did call Professor Worthington, and he told me to meet him here.”

“Colin told you to meet him at Central
Booking?”
 
His eyes flamed with
anger, and he pulled his phone back out.
 
“I’m going to have to have a talk with him.”

I grabbed the phone out of his hand and
held it out of his reach.
 
“You’ll
do no such thing!” I said.
 
“He’s
my boss, and I’m on your case.
 
If
he tells me to meet him at Central Booking, I’ll meet him at Central Booking.”

 
I thought Noah would be mad at me for defying him, thought I
might have to pay for it later, and the idea sent a warmth flowing through my
center.
 
I flashed back to what
he’d just done to me in the restaurant bathroom.

Show
me your tits, Charlotte.

But Noah actually didn’t seem to care
that I was contradicting him.
 
In
fact, he seemed almost bored, the way you’d be when a child was having a
tantrum and you were just waiting for them to burn themselves out so you could
put them down for a nap.

“Please give me my phone back,
Charlotte.”

“No,” I said, not because I thought he
was actually going to call Professor Worthington, but because I felt like being
difficult.
 
I was acting out
because I wanted Noah’s attention, or at least some acknowledgment of what was
going on.
 
He’d just been arrested
for
murder.
 
He’d been handcuffed, thrown into the back of a police car, brought to
Central Booking like a common thug.
 
And now he was standing there lecturing me about how I shouldn’t have
come to such a dangerous place, like that was the most important thing
happening right now.
 
“Where is
Professor Worthington, anyway?” I asked.