What He Sacrifices (What He Wants, Book Fourteen) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (4 page)

I laughed, almost giddy.
 

I couldn’t believe what was happening.
 
It was like a movie.
 
How insane, me, Charlotte Holloway, the
star of my own movie!

A laugh escaped my lips, but it sounded
strange, bubbly somehow, like I was laughing underwater.
 
It tasted sweet, and I realized I’d
never tasted a laugh before, didn’t know that laughs could have flavors.

I laughed again, just to try it, and the sweetness
exploded in my mouth, like liquid cotton candy.

You are cracking up, Holloway,
I thought.
 
You are
losing your shit.

I laughed again, only this time, the laugh
tasted bitter and burnt, like I’d licked a piece of wood.

I frowned.

I didn’t like the new taste of my laugh.

What was the point of being able to taste your
laughs if they were going to taste like old tree bark?
 
And where was Noah?
 
I couldn’t feel his arms around me
anymore.

“Noah?” I tried.
 
“Noah?”

But he wouldn’t answer.

“Noah!” I screamed.
 
“Noah!
 
Answer me!
 
Where are you?”

“Relax,” a voice said.
 
But it wasn’t Noah’s voice.
 
It was someone else’s voice.
 
A girl.
 
“Just relax, sweetie.”

“Noah?”
 
I tried to turn away from the girl’s voice.
 
It sounded too grounded, and I felt it
reach out and try to pull me back into reality.
 
I didn’t want to be there. I wanted to
be with Noah.

“Sweetie,” the voice said, and now I felt a tiny,
cool palm on my forehead.
 
“Sweetie,
relax.
 
I think you’re
hallucinating, but it’s okay.
 
Everything’s going to be okay.
 
It’s just the drugs.”

I closed my eyes tight and tried to block her
out, but it was no use.
 
The warm comfort
of my dream was starting to recede and the harsh reality of my situation was
closing in on me, its cold fingers forcing me out of my cocoon.

“That’s it,” the girl’s voice cooed.
 
 
“That’s it, honey.
 
Wake up.”

I swallowed and opened my eyes, saying one last
quick prayer that I would wake up back in my dream, that Noah would be carrying
me out of here like I was a fairy princess.

Instead, a pair of deep blue eyes stared back
at me.

I sat up.

“Are you okay?” the owner of the blue eyes
asked.
 
She held a water bottle out
to me.
 
“Here, drink this.”

I glanced at it, but the water looked gritty
and had a slight brown tinge to it.
 
It looked more like pond water than something I would want to drink.

“No,” I said, swallowing around the lump in my
throat.
 
“That’s okay.
 
I’m fine.”

I got my first real good look at her then.
 
It was the girl from the other night,
the one who’d been our waitress, the one who’d grabbed my ankle and told me she
was in
trouble, that
they were going to kill her.

My eyes took in the room, the desks, the
chalkboard up front,
the
shackles that were attached
to the walls around the perimeter.

I was in that room.
 
The
school room
I’d dreamt about, the one they’d been keeping the waitress locked up in.

Bile rose in my throat.

“Oh, no,” the girl said, sounding
dismayed.
 
“They didn’t tell you.”

“Didn’t tell me what?”

“That you’re going.”

“Going where?”

“To the auction.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, even though of
course I already knew the answer.

“I mean they’re going to put us in the
auction.”

“And we’re going to be bought?”

“Yes.”
 
She nodded, her face serious.
 
“I’m Mikayla, by the way.”

“Charlotte.”
 
I noticed there was a bruise on her
cheek, blooming purple and green, and she must have noticed me looking at it,
because her hand rose to her cheekbone.
 

“It doesn’t hurt,” she said.
 

I didn’t ask her how she got it.
 
I didn’t want to know, and besides, it
was unimportant.
 
However she got it
wasn’t good, and all I knew was that I needed to get the hell out of here.

My heart was racing, and I took a deep
breath.
 
I needed a plan.

“What are they going to do to us?” I
asked.
 
I told myself that whatever
she said, I was not going to react.

Mikayla swallowed, then looked at me.
 
“We’ll be dressed and readied, then
brought to the stage.
 
Men will have
a chance to bid on us, and then we’ll be their property for the night.
 
If no one bids, we will become property
of the club.”

She reached out and grabbed my arm, then,
tightly, and her eyes got wide.
 
She
slid them
side to side
quickly, almost like she was
looking for someone in the room, even though the two of us were alone.
 
“You need to get me out of here,” she
whispered.
 
Her lips were dry and
cracked, and that, along with the hollowness of her cheeks.
 
“They
don’t… some of
them never
come back.”

“Some of who never come back?” I asked her.

“The girls.”
 
She gripped me tighter, her nails
digging into my skin.
 
I looked down
at the marks she was leaving on me, the same way she’d left those marks on my
ankle.
 

“What girls?”

“The other girls in the auction.
 
They get held here, then after a while,
they get taken away.
 
They never
come back.
 
Ever.”

“Where do they go?”

“They get killed,” she said.
 
“I know it.
 
They know too much.
 
I know too much.”

“Who kills them?” I asked.
 
“Professor Worthington?”

“Who?”
 
She frowned.

“The man who brought me in here,” I said.
 
“Is he the one who kills them?”
  
Was this how Professor Worthington
curated his victims?
 
He brought
them to Force, subjected them to sexual slavery for a few weeks,
then
took them somewhere to be killed?
 
It would explain how he’d been able to
kill Dani and Nora – they had both been to Force with Noah.

But something about that felt very off –
Dani and Nora hadn’t been missing before they’d been killed, and what about
Katie?
 
As far as I knew, she had no
connection to Force.
 
Her only
connection to Force had been through Noah.

Had Noah lied to me?
 
Had he been with Katie?
 
Had he taken her to Force?
 
I remembered those emails, the way
Katie’s friend Maddy had insisted Katie had been involved with an older man.
 
Had it been Noah?

Mikayla shook her head.
 
“I’ve never seen the man who brought you
here before in my life.
 
It’s always
– ”

She stopped talking as the door behind us
opened.
 
Professor Worthington stood
there, a devilish smile on his face.

“It’s time,” he said.
 
He’d taken his leather jacket off, and
now he was wearing a tight black t-shirt.
 
His hair was slicked back, and there was color high on his cheeks.
 
He seemed excited for whatever was about
to happen.

His eyes flicked over to Mikayla, who swallowed
nervously and instantly bowed her head, looking down at the floor.
 
She bent her knees a tiny bit, almost
like she was about to kneel, but wasn’t sure if she should.

Professor Worthington walked over to her,
reached down and grabbed the top of the tank top she was wearing, yanking the
material down until her breast was exposed.
 
He fondled her, grabbing her nipple and
twisting it hard.

She moaned.

“Do you like that?” Professor Worthington
demanded.

“If it pleases Sir, then yes.”

“It does please me.”
 
He dropped her and walked over to me,
handed me the bag he was holding.
 
“Put this on.”

“What?”

“Put.
 
This.
 
On.”

I opened the bag and looked inside.
 
My heart sank as I realized it was the
outfit I’d seen the other girls in the auction line wearing.

A tiny loincloth and a matching bra top.

My eyes filled with tears as I thought about
putting the clothes on.
 
I didn’t
want to be exposed to anyone like that, ever, much less a roomful of strange
men and a man who was about to kill me.

Anger welled inside of me.

How dare this man treat women like this?

“No.”
 
I shook my head.
 
“No.
 
I’m not doing it.”
 
I dropped the bag onto the floor and
kicked it toward the wall.

Mikayla glanced up from where she was standing
with her gaze still directed toward the dusty floor.
 
A look of horror passed over her face
and she gave me a tiny shake of her head.

No,
she was
saying.
 
Don’t do that.

But I didn’t care.

I wasn’t going to be put into the auction.
 
At least not willingly.
 
Why would I do that?
 
So someone could win me, so someone
could grope me,
rape me
,
tie me up
?
 
Was that what was going to happen to
me?
 
Or was I going to be property
of the club?
 
Was I going to be
taken hostage, my wrists tied as men had their way with me after forcing me to
serve them drinks?

No fucking way.

Noah,
I
thought.
 
God, Noah, where are you?

Professor Worthington looked down at the bag on
the floor.
 
“Pick it up.”

“No,” I said forcefully.
 
Then I did the only thing that I thought
I could do.
 
I spit at him.

A shock look came over his face as my saliva
hit his cheeks.

The retribution was swift and painful.
 

He reached out and backhanded me across the
face, so hard that the bones in my face rattled and my knees buckled.

I fell to the floor, landing hard on my elbow.

“Fuck you,” I said, not wanting to give him the
satisfaction of knowing how much it hurt.

He kicked me in the stomach, then reached down
and grabbed me under my arms, pulled me up and pushed me against the wall so
hard I could feel my spine crack.
 

“I’m sorry,” he said.
 
“I’m sorry I had to do that to you.
 
But you need to learn your place,
Charlotte.
 
You need to learn what
it is to be a worthless female.
 
And
going into the auction is part of that.”
 
His voice was tender now.
 
I
could feel him, hard in his pants against me.
 
I whimpered, my eyes filling with
tears.
 
“Now put the outfit on,” he
said.
 
“Or I’ll have to make you do
it.”
 
His eye twitched.
 
“And as much as I would enjoy it, that
kind of thing will have to be saved for later.”

He ground his pelvis against me, making sure I
could feel how hard he was.

“Girl,” he called to Mikayla.
 
“Get me that bag.”

She scurried over and brought him the discarded
bag, which he then passed to me.
  
This time, I took it.

Professor Worthington kissed me softly on my
forehead.
 
His lips were dry, and yet
somehow I could still feel slick moisture on my skin after he pulled away.
 
“I’m going to enjoy killing you,
Charlotte.
 
I’m sorry I have to, but
God, I’m going to enjoy it.”