What He Sacrifices (What He Wants, Book Fourteen) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (3 page)

I glanced to my side, wondering if I could make
it to the street before he caught me.

He must have known what I was thinking, because
he shook his head, annoyed.
 
“Don’t
even think about running, Charlotte.
 
I am faster than you.
 
You
won’t make it more than a few feet, and then things will be so much worse.”

I licked my bottom lip and considered screaming
again.
 
But there was no one around.
 
And I was afraid that if I screamed, I
would waste valuable energy that I might need later.

I was already so tired.
 
The jolt of adrenaline I’d felt when I’d
first woken up was dissipating, and
a heavy
warmth
pooled in my extremities.

Professor Worthington pulled another syringe
out of his pocket.
 
“I will drug you
again if I have to,” he said.
 
“Don’t make me do that.
 
Will
you walk where I tell you to?”

I nodded.

I wanted to fight, but I needed to stay
alive.
 
If he knocked me out again,
I would have no chance at figuring out where I was, no chance at trying to
outsmart him.
 
Hell, I’d have no
chance at anything.
 

Why hadn’t he killed me while I was passed out?

The question tugged at the edges of my
mind.
 
If he’d wanted to kill me,
why hadn’t he just strangled me when I was unconscious?
 
He’d had me alone, in his car.
 
Why hadn’t he taken me somewhere and
killed me?

Because he wants to torture you.

It was the only thing that made sense.
 
If he wanted to kill me, he would
have.
 

Don’t think about that, Charlotte,
Noah’s voice whispered in my ear
.
 
Just take things
one step
at a time.
 
I’m right here with you.

But he
wasn’t
right here with me.

 
He
was locked up in some jail cell somewhere, with no idea what was happening.
 
When he got out, he’d find me dead, and then
he’d somehow be blamed for it.
 
The
only thing that gave me some small amount of comfort was that Noah would have
an alibi.
 
You couldn’t kill someone
if you were locked up in prison.

Or had Professor Worthington figured out some
way around that?

My head swam with possibilities, and I forced
myself to try and concentrate on what was happening in the moment.

Professor Worthington had taken my wrist and
was now leading me toward the back of the brick building that flanked the
lot.
 
The building was large and dark,
with windows spaced far apart.
 
For
all intents and purposes, it seemed deserted.

Was he going to take me into an abandoned building
and kill me?
 

After a few more steps, the professor let go of
my wrist, then crouched down in front of a bulkhead and spun a combination
lock.
 

A breeze kicked up and I shivered, a shiver
that rattled through me and made my teeth chatter.

Professor Worthington pulled the bulkhead door
open.

He looked at me and licked his lips.
 
His eyes were pure black and soulless.

“Go,” he said.

“What?”

“Go down there.”

I took a step toward the bulkhead and glanced
down.
 
I’d imagined dirty stairs
littered with trash and used needles, but the concrete was swept clean.
 
From somewhere in the distance, I
thought I could hear the murmur of voices, but I wasn’t sure.

I hesitated.
 
“Please,” I said.
 
“I don’t –”

“Go!” Professor Worthington screamed.
 
He grabbed my arm and pushed me, and I
stumbled and fell down the concrete stairs.
 
I tried to catch myself with my hands,
but the force of my fall was too much.
 
My arm buckled under my weight, and the bones in my wrist vibrated with the
force.

I cried out as I collapsed into a heap at the
bottom of the stairs.

A second later, Professor Worthington’s feet
appeared next to me.
 
He reached
down and grabbed me by my hair, snapping my head back.
 
“Look what you made me do,” he growled through
gritted teeth.
 
“Now get up.
 
Get up right now.”

The breath had been knocked out of me, and I
took in a deep breath through my nose, trying to calm myself down.

“Get up!” Professor Worthington screamed.
 
“Get up right now, you filthy little
whore!”

I stood up.

As soon as I was fully upright, Professor
Worthington pushed me up against the wall and pressed his body into mine.

“Charlotte,” he said.
 
“I really do no want to have to hurt
you, baby.”

I hated that he was calling me baby, hated the
feel of his hands on my body.

I turned my face away from his and squeezed my
eyes shut tight.

“I will hurt you, though, if I have to,” he
said.
 
“Now walk.”

He stepped back and pointed down the dark
hallway.
 
He’d left the bulkhead
open and the tiny bit of light from the abandoned lot shined down onto the
floor.
 
But ahead of me was pitch
black.
 

The voices I’d thought I’d heard were gone, and
now the air seemed still and dead.

I had no idea what was waiting for me at the
end of that hall.

I hesitated, and Professor Worthington kneeled
down and began to pull something out of his boot.
 
A plan flashed through my mind– if
I could hit him hard against the back of his head, I might be able to get away.

I raised my arms, but before I could even think
about bringing them down on the back of the professor’s head, I saw the glint
of the knife.

Professor Worthington pulled it all the way out
of his boot and straightened back up.

He tossed the knife back and forth between his
hands, and I shivered, marveling at how different he suddenly was.
 
I couldn’t even begin to imagine him at
the front of the classroom anymore, teaching us.
 
He’d seemed so different then – a
militant law school professor, in the middle of a divorce, with his tweed
jackets and khaki pants.

Now he wore a leather jacket and heavy work
boots, and his eyes were crazed.
 

I wanted to scream, but I knew it would be a
waste of precious energy.
 
There was
no one around to hear me.
 
But I
also knew that if I walked down that hall, into whatever hell he was leading me
toward, I had less of a chance of anyone finding me.

Noah,
I
thought.
 
Noah, where are you?

He’d sworn to protect me, now here I was,
alone, without him.

“Charlotte!” Professor Worthington barked.
 
He grabbed my arm and twisted it behind
my back harder and harder until I yelled out.
 
“Move!” he growled, pushing the tip of
the knife into my skin.

I had no choice.

I started walking.

***

The smell.

It was familiar.

Must and sweat and something else – cedar
and leather.

My eyes were becoming adjusted to the darkness
now, and I took in the walls, the rough concrete and cement, the grittiness of
the floor underneath us.

Force.

Professor Worthington had taken me to Force.

For a split second, I was flooded with
relief.
 
I knew where I was.
 
Force was filled with people.
 
I wasn’t in some abandoned warehouse in
the middle of nowhere where Professor Worthington could keep me for months
without anyone having a chance of finding me.

But the relief was short-lived, burning out
like a spark that doesn’t catch flame.
 
I was at Force.
 
Which meant
no one would help me.
 
I’d been attacked by Audi James
here, and no one had tried
to stop him – in fact, they’d led me to him willingly. That waitress, the
one with the dead eyes, had been here, screaming for help.
 
And no one had cared.
 

I felt my shoulders sag, felt my body on the
precipice of giving up.
 
I was
suddenly filled with weariness, the kind of weariness that made me want to just
lay down and let Professor Worthington do whatever he wanted to me.

I was so tired.

We were coming to a set of double doors now,
and Professor Worthington pushed through it, even though the wide red bar
across it warned that it was for emergency purposes only.

As soon as we were on the other side of the
door, the darkness ebbed, the corridor lit with dim industrial lights that
lined the ceiling.
 

There were also doors off this hallway.

And it was a lot more familiar.

The hallway.

It was the one where Noah and I had chased
Josh.
 
Professor Worthington must
have led me in through a back way, and I was walking down the hallway from the
other side.

We reached a door, and Professor Worthington
stopped outside of it.

He looked at me, reached up and slid his
fingernail down my cheek.
 
I wasn’t
sure if he meant the gesture to be intimate, but it didn’t feel intimate.
 
He scraped his nail right into my skin,
and I could feel the delicate top layer of my epidermis splitting and leaving a
shallow scratch.

His sandy blonde hair was slick with sweat, his
complexion ruddy.
 
A smile passed
over his face, his eyes clouding.
 
He liked that he’d left a mark on me, and his face took on an almost a
dreamy quality, as if he couldn’t wait to do more.

He reached down and opened the door, pushed me
roughly inside.

“Stay there,” he said.
 
“I’ll be back to get you soon, darling.”

He turned around and shut the door, and I heard
the sound of a key in the lock.
 

As soon as he was gone, my legs crumpled under
me and I slid to the floor.
 
It was
the strangest sensation, almost like I didn’t even know that I was going to do
that until I felt the hard ground beneath me.

I closed my eyes.
 
I didn’t want to know what was in this
room.
 
I didn’t want to know where I
was.
 
All I wanted to do was lay my
head down and go to sleep.

No, Charlotte,
I heard Noah’s voice in my head.
 
Do not
fall asleep.
 
You need to stay
awake.

But I’m so tired,
I whispered back.
 
Please, Noah,
I’m so tired.

I could tell I was fading into a hazy state,
fueled half by emotional exhaustion and half by the drugs that were still in my
system.
 
I could feel my
consciousness slipping away, replaced by a dream.

In it, I could see Noah, could feel him with me,
felt him picking me up and carrying me out of the room.
 
His arms were strong, stable.

“You came,” I said, surprised.
 
He was dressed in a black tuxedo with a
crisp white shirt.
 
I was wearing a
shimmery pink dress with a sheer bottom, the strips of fabric cut and tiered,
designed to slip and flow around your legs.
 
It had spaghetti straps and a fitted
bodice, the kind of thing I could never wear in real life because it was made
for girls with waiflike figures and flat chests.

“Of course I came,” he said.

“Noah,” I said.
 
“I was so scared.”

“You don’t have to be scared, Charlotte.
 
I will always protect you.”

I murmured his name again and closed my eyes,
burying my face in his chest.
 
Comfort
rolled over me, extinguishing the panic that had burned through me just a few
moments ago.

I knew it was just a dream. But I didn’t care.

I wanted more drugs.
 
I wanted to stay in this half-awake
state, where I knew nothing was real and I didn’t care.
 
This was how drug addicts must feel, I
thought, slightly stunned at my new revelation.
 
I’d always thought it was a matter of
willpower, but now I realized I had been horribly wrong.
 
If this was how it felt to be high, I
understood why they never wanted to come down.