What He Provokes (What He Wants #18) (3 page)

This part of her, at least, wasn’t fake. My mother had always had a soft spot for animals, particularly dogs, probably because dogs didn’t care what you were wearing or how much money you made.

“Oh, Noah, this is gorgeous,” my mom said, straightening up and looking around the apartment. “How long have you been here?” I saw her taking in the chic expressionist abstract art on the walls, the buttery leather couches, the Ultra HD TV, everything being mentally added up not only in cost, but in status.

“A few years,” Noah said. “It’s a pre-war building, so it needed some renovations.”

He was in the kitchen now, and he’d pulled his suit coat off and tossed it over one of the stools in front of the breakfast bar. My mom’s eyes traveled up his body, taking in his broad shoulders, his chiseled jaw, his tapered waist, the way his clothes fit him perfectly, how he looked put together and stylish and yet still managed to ooze masculinity and power. “Would you like something to drink, Pamela?” he asked.

“I’d love something to drink,” she said.

“I have a new bottle of white I just received as a gift from a client,” Noah said. “Would you like to try it?”

“That sounds wonderful.”

“Charlotte?” Noah asked, as he pulled the bottle out of the wine cooler and reached into the drawer for the bottle opener.

“No, thanks,” I said. “I’m just… I’m tired.”

It was a lie. I
was
tired, but I also wanted wine. I wanted glass after glass of it, the smooth rich flavor filling my mouth and settling in my belly, the warmth and drowsiness taking over and softening the ragged edges of the stress and anxiety this day had brought, which were digging into me like the sharp blade of a saw.

Noah poured my mom a glass of wine and then pulled out a block of Brie, set it on a wooden cutting board along with a fresh bunch of organic red grapes and a tiny pot of cranberry pepper jelly. He added stone ground crackers to the board, along with an elegant cheese knife, the handle hand-carved into an ornate beaded pattern.

“I’ll probably just go to bed,” I said. “I’m tired.”

“Are you okay?” Noah asked, looking up at me with concern.

No, I’m not okay. I’m tired and scared and we had a horrible fight and now my mom is here.
“I’m fine,” I said, giving them a tight smile. “Mom, can I show you the guest room?”

“I’ll take care of that,” Noah said. “You get some rest, Charlotte. I’ll take care of Pamela.”

I nodded, twisting my hands together in front of me nervously. “Is that okay, Mom? We’ll talk tomorrow?”

“Yes,” she said, waving me away. “Noah and I have a lot to talk about, seeing as how I didn’t even know he existed until this evening.”

She was leaning forward on the marble breakfast bar, her wine glass in one hand, swirling it around like she’d learned to do at a winery my stepfather had taken her to last year. She’d already forgotten me, as was typical of her, turning her attention to the shiniest thing or object in the room, which in this case was Noah.

I took Docket out and then retired to the bedroom, where I stripped off my clothes and debated between a shower and a bath. I didn’t know that I had the energy to stand in the shower, and yet the thought of sitting in the bath for a while also seemed exhausting.

I opted for the shower, figuring that the shortest path to getting me into bed was the best.

By the time I was done brushing my teeth and pulling on one of Noah’s t-shirts, the party in the other room was still going strong. I could hear Noah holding court, entertaining my mom with stories about New York and his practice, the sound of her laughter tinkling down the hall.

I turned over in bed and pulled the covers tight around me, trying to fight the annoyance that was rising in my chest.

Noah knew how I felt about my mother. He knew what she’d said to the papers about me dating Professor Worthington. I’d
told
him that she’d only wanted to come here so she could make everything about her.

I hadn’t even had a chance to confront her about what she’d done, because Noah had immediately taken over, treating her like some kind of princess, inviting her to stay in his house and serving her cheese and grapes and wine.

Even Docket liked her.

He was out in the kitchen with them, and I could just imagine him sitting there, his furry butt planted on the floor, offering his paw up while my mom fed him expensive cheese that would probably upset his stomach.

I sighed and turned the light on my nightstand back on, then grabbed my phone and began scrolling through my facebook page. My facebook page was a mix of people from undergrad who I was never even really that close with, and some people from law school.

My eyes wandered down the page over the statuses – “
If eating a candy bar for dinner is wrong, I don’t want to be right!” “Does anyone have the study sheets for Dr. Covington’s lecture series?”
— wondering what people would think if I put up a status: “
Found a dead body today and got whipped by my fiancé. Guess I’ll sleep well tonight!”

The only person on my facebook page with a status halfway decent was Cora, the girl whose bachelorette party I’d been at the night I met Noah. In her latest post there was a picture of her holding her hand up and puffing her lip out toward the camera in a sad face.

Her finger was bare – no ring. She’d hashtagged the post #wedding #cancelled #maybenexttimehe’llthinkbeforehecheats #ohwell and #ontothenext.

I smiled in spite of myself. Leave it to Cora to turn a cancelled wedding into something to joke about.

“Something funny?”

Noah was standing in the doorway, a glass of water in his hand. He crossed the room and set it down on the nightstand next to me.

“It’s nothing,” I said. “Just my friend called off her wedding.”

His eyes darkened. “Do you find cancelled weddings amusing, Charlotte?”

“No.” I sat up in bed and readjusted the pillows behind me. The pillowcases were creased perfectly and smelled faintly of lilacs and linen. The housekeeper must have come that day. “It’s just that my friend Cora can be kind of amusing, the way she puts all her shit out there. She was the one I was out with the night I met you.”

I’d been hoping to lighten the mood, but Noah didn’t seem light. Instead, his eyes stormed darker and he walked back to the bedroom door and closed it with a soft click.

“You shouldn’t get engaged if you don’t intend to go through with the wedding.” He sounded so assertive, so sure of himself, the way he was with everything, completely willing to just see everything in black and white.

“Yeah, well, sometimes things happen, Noah.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” I said. I shook my head, realizing I was coming off harsher than I’d intended. I was taking my frustration I’d felt toward my mother out on him, and it wasn’t fair. “How’s my mom?”

“She’s fine.” He reached up and loosed his tie, slid it out of the collar of his shirt with a whooshing sound. My body instantly flooded with desire, thinking of him tying my wrists with it, pushing me up against the headboard, my ass in the air, my groans muffled by the pillow as he thrust into me from behind.

I swallowed and watched as he began unbuttoning his shirt, his chiseled body coming into view, every muscle and tendon taut and tan, the kind of musculature that could only be created with a certain type of self-discipline, one that allowed for hours of running and lifting weights.

“I set her up in the guest room,” he said. “She seemed happy enough.”

I’m sure she was,
I thought, biting back the sarcastic remark before it left my lips. Noah’s guest room was insane, the bed circular and plush, the bathroom stocked with high-end beauty products – Estee Lauder face wash, Gilchrist and Soames shampoo, Perricone moisturizers. My mother would probably take whatever she didn’t use with her when she went back upstate ad put them in her own bathroom to impress her friends when they came over.

“Thank you for doing that,” I said. I was thankful that Noah had set her up. Not because I cared that much about if she was comfortable or not, but because it meant I wouldn’t have to deal with her.

Noah didn’t say anything. Instead, he sat down in the chair in the corner and began removing his shoes.

“You two seemed to get along well,” I said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. I clenched the sheets in my hands, willing myself to calm down. Noah and I had already been fighting, the last thing I needed to do was to escalate things because my mother.

“Don’t do that,” Noah said, standing up from the chair.

“Don’t do what?” I asked, even though I knew exactly what he was talking about.

“Don’t get annoyed with me because I was nice to your mother.”

“I’m not
annoyed,”
I said, “but you have to admit it was pretty rude of her to just show up here unannounced. You could have had my back. Especially after I explained to you that the only reason she wanted to come here was so she could make this whole thing about her.”

Noah’s jaw twitched.

“I just think that maybe we should have been a little harsher with her, especially after what she said to the newspaper.”

“She’s your mother, Charlotte,” he said. “She’s going to be my mother-in-law. I will treat her with respect.”

“Why? She hasn’t treated me with respect.” I knew I was acting like a baby, but I needed him to understand. I wanted him to know the years of things she’d done to me, how every award I’d won, every accomplishment, had been a chance for her to show off.

“Whatever is going on between you and your mother isn’t going to be solved by me being rude to her.” He stood up and crossed the room, opened his dresser and pulled out a pair of plaid pajama pants.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Charlotte.” He closed his eyes and pressed his fingers against his temples, like he was getting a headache and I was the cause. “I cannot keep having this fight with you.”

“What fight?”

“The fight where you try to question me.”

“So I’m not allowed to question you now?”

His eyes blazed into mine, and he stood there in the middle of the room, shirtless and commanding. I held my breath, not saying anything else, daring him to admit that yes, he didn’t want me questioning him, that he wanted to be free to do whatever he wanted to do, to tell me things or not tell me things, to let me in or not let me in, and I was supposed to just take it.

“I’ve been very honest with you, Charlotte,” Noah said. “I told you from the beginning the kind of things I would require from you if you were to enter into this relationship.”

His hands balled into fists at his sides as he tried to quell the emotion welling up inside of him. The gesture was slight, but that, coupled with the way he looked standing there with his shirt unbuttoned, showing off his broad chest and washboard abs, the tapered V of his hips, the soft line of hair that started at this belly button and disappeared below his belt, caused my whole body to flush.

“Are you going to punish me?” I asked, thrusting my chin in the air. I kept my eyes on his, my heart thrumming against my ribs, waiting, hoping. Because no matter what I said, no matter how much I protested, the truth was that deep down, in the darkest part of my soul, I wanted this too, was almost coming to require it.

“No, Charlotte,” he said, but I could see his palm twitch slightly as he unclenched his fists. “I’m not going to punish you.”

“Why not?”

“Because that’s not how this works.”

“That’s not how what works?”

He shook his head, the storm inside of him raging harder as the spark of my disobedience began to ignite something inside of him, something broken and raw, something I was afraid I would never completely understand. He stood there, backlit by the soft light of my reading lamp, so beautiful, so damaged, so perfect, and my heart clenched.

“This relationship doesn’t involve you asking to be punished, Charlotte. You either haven’t completely grasped that concept yet, or you need more training. But I will be the one to decide how we remedy your disobedience.” His eyes raked up my body, and I swallowed. “And trust me, it
will
be remedied.”

He turned and headed for the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. A second later, I heard the sound of the shower starting.

I turned over in bed and closed my eyes, fighting back the tears that threatened to spill down my cheeks. I was upset he didn’t want punish me, because I longed to feel that connection to him so badly.
Then
I got upset at myself for craving that, for wanting him to tie me and whip me so that I could feel close to him. It was so fucked up, and I was beginning to feel like I was in over my head, incapable of deciding what was okay and what wasn’t. I felt like my brain was in a war with my body and my emotions, and I wasn’t sure whose side I was on.

A short time later, Noah slid into bed next to me.

My breathing hitched, the anticipation tearing through me. I wanted him to reach for me, to pull me close, to put his arms around me. I wanted him to run his hands through my hair and tell me everything was going to be okay.

But he didn’t.

Because as usual, he had all the power.

W
hen I woke
, the room was dark.

The only light was the light from the hallway that spilled under the door, casting long shadows across the hardwood floors.

The room had a certain stillness to it, the kind of stillness that let me know I was alone. I wondered where Noah was, if he was in his study working. He’d been known to do that at night when he couldn’t sleep.

I ran my hands under the covers on his side of the bed, feeling the emptiness, wondering if I should go and find him, if I should try to talk to him.

I didn’t want to fight with him anymore.

But I didn’t want to push him either -- I knew from experience that pushing him tended to be a losing battle that only made things worse.

I rolled over in bed and closed my eyes, willing myself to fall back asleep.