What He Shields (What He Wants Book Seventeen) (3 page)

My body was wound tight, begging for a release,
the want between my legs so intense I felt my mind spinning, not able to
concentrate on anything but my need to come.

But Noah was intent on punishing me, and the
punishment wasn’t over.

“Fix your clothes, Charlotte,” he said, and
then he turned and walked away.

***

Ten minutes later, my heartbeat had slowed, and
the wetness between my legs had dissipated, but I was still aware of my desire
for him, always present and pulsing under the surface of every interaction.

I’d fixed my clothes and was drinking from a
bottle of water Noah had gotten me from the mini bar.

He was sitting at the desk in the corner, looking
at something on his iPad.
 
His face
was dark with disapproval – whether it was at me or whatever was on the
screen, I wasn’t sure.
 
“You need to
eat something, Charlotte.”

“No, I don’t.”

“What have you eaten today?”

“I’m not hungry.”

He reached over and picked up the phone, called
and ordered room service for the two of us.

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.
 
“So what are we doing here, anyway?” I
asked as I sat down on the bed.
 
It
was one of those swan beds, the kind with dark wood and a huge footboard, the
kind that tried to convey a sense of old money and classic sensibilities.
 
The comforter was covered in an ornate
gold and purple vine pattern, and I traced the leaves with my finger.

“Waiting for Lilah.”

“But you said she was gone.”

“I said she took off.
 
I’m hoping she’s going to come
back.”
 

I sunk back further into the bed crossed my
legs together.
 
My panties were
still in Noah’s pocket, and as my legs pushed together I became startlingly
aware of the fact that my pussy was bare.
 
And still very wet.

“I don’t understand what happened,” I said,
shaking my head. “Why was she here in the first place?”
 
I shifted my weight, trying to get in a
position that would make me less aware of the ache between my
legs ,
and as I did, something shifted on the bed next to
me.
 
I looked over.
 

Sitting in the middle of the bed was a grey
hoodie, a beaded tiger eye bracelet, a Coach wristlet, and a small
cloth-covered notebook.
 
Lilah’s things.
 
She must have been in quite the hurry to get out of here if she hadn’t
even taken her stuff.

“She was released from the hospital this
morning,” Noah said.
 
“Clementine
and I brought her here to make sure Lilah had a safe place to stay.”
 

“So then how did you lose her?”
 
I picked up the cloth-covered book and
flipped to the first page, hoping maybe it would give me some clue as to where
Lilah had gone.
 
But the book was a
diary of some sort, not an address book like I’d been hoping.
 

I’d known that was a long shot – no one
kept an address book anymore.
 
On
the front page was written “DIARY OF LILAH PARKS, A DAILY RECORD OF MY
HAPPENINGS, THOUGHTS, DREAMS, ETC.” in a looping scrawl with a pink pen.

“We were in the other room,” Noah said.

“What other room?”

“We secured the adjoining room to use as a work
space.”

Wonderful.
 
So now not only was Noah going to be one hotel room away from a gorgeous
nineteen-year-old he had an inexplicable urge to protect, now he was going to
be there with his ex-submissive.
 
Ex-girlfriend?
 
Had Noah and
Clementine been in a relationship?
 
Or had their arrangement been purely sexual?
 
Even now, the terminology and rules
didn’t click together fully in my brain, instead jumbling together in a
confusing tangle.

“So let me get this straight,” I said.
 
“You got Lilah an emergency arraignment
first thing this morning, and her bail was set at what?”

“One million dollars.”

I looked up sharply from Lilah’s journal.
  
“A million dollars? Why so high?”
It was true that bails tended to be higher in murder cases, but a million
dollars?
 
That seemed out of
proportion to the crime – Lilah had no priors, and she’d been assaulted
in jail. Plus Noah must have pulled some serious strings in order to get her an
arraignment today, which meant the judge must have seen something pretty
serious in order to make him set Lilah’s bail so high.

“You know these New York judges,” Noah
grumbled.
 
“They want to seem like
they all have big dicks, so they assert their power wherever they can.”

“You paid her bail?”

“Yes, Charlotte.
 
I paid her bail.”

He paid a million dollars to get her out of
jail.

I let this sink in as I turned back to Lilah’s
journal and flipped a page.
 
Part of
me knew it was wrong to read someone else’s diary, but I didn’t care.
 
If she hadn’t wanted someone to read it,
then she shouldn’t have taken off and left it sitting here in full view.

The first page was dated months ago.

Dear Diary,
she wrote, and I was already annoyed that she’d started her entry
with something as corny and mundane as ‘dear diary.’

I am sorry to start this diary on such a
sucktastic
note, but I am really
frickin
’
upset right now.

First of all, Ryan and I have been together for
six months.
 
Today is our
anniversary.
 
From the beginning,
anything Ry wanted to do sexually, I agreed to.
 
Sucking his dick.
 
Doggy style in his
car.
 
Even letting him
finger
me under the table at dinner when his parents were
right there!
 
(I’m almost positive
his dad knew what was going on, and what’s worse, I think he liked it.
 
His dad is a dirty pervert, although I
have to admit I like it when I catch him looking at my ass.
 
Older men make my panties wet.)

Anyway, today, when I asked Ry to have anal sex
with me, he acted like I was asking him to murder someone!
 
Is it really that disgusting, Diary?
 

 
God, I want to feel him in my ass, Diary,
need to feel that big thick dick of his filling me until he comes inside of
me.
 

I can’t figure out what it is about him, but
every time I’m with him, all I want is to get dirtier and dirtier and
dirtier!!!!!
 
I am sick of him just
coming on my face, or in my pussy.
 
I want to feel his ropes in my asshole, let them run down my thighs,
sticky and oozing.

He says anal sex is gross.
 

But I need to be butt fucked!
 
I will explain more
later
,
but now Ryan and I are going to some fair Upstate.
 

I hope this entry doesn’t make it sound as if I
don’t love him, because I do.
 
He is
kind and good and everything I’ve ever wanted.
 
I know I’m a brat, but if I am, it’s
because I know that I want what I want.
 
And I’m used to getting it.

And I will get it, hahahaha.

More later.

Love,

Lilah

I straightened up.
 

Her diary sure didn’t read like an innocent
girl who’d been the victim of attempted sexual assault.
 
I tried to reconcile this new
information with the fact that Noah had paid one million dollars to get Lilah
out of jail.

“Seems a little excessive, don’t you think?”
 
I asked carefully.

Noah leaned back in the desk chair, crossed his
fingers together over his stomach and regarded me.
 
“What seems excessive, Charlotte?”

“Paying a million dollars to get a stranger out
on bail.” I held my finger in LIlah’s journal to keep my place.
 
“I’m assuming you used your own money?”

“Yes,” he said, nodding, his eyes locked on
mine.

I shrugged.
 
“Well, it might have been nice if you
consulted me first,” I said.
 
“This
is my case too, Noah.”

“You’re a law student, Charlotte,” he
said.
 
“If I feel the need to ask
your opinion on something, then I will.”

“Yeah, well, what about asking my opinion on risking
a million dollars on some nineteen-year-old girl who writes about begging her
boyfriend to fuck her in the ass?”
 
I held up the journal.

“What?”
 
Noah was up out of his chair, crossing the room to me.

I handed him the journal and watched as he read
the entry.
 

“Where did you get this?” he asked.

“It was just sitting here on the bed.”
 
I gestured toward the other things,
which were still sitting there in a pile.

“You shouldn’t have read this, Charlotte.”

“Yeah, well, I did.”
 
I crossed my arms over my chest.
 
“So?”

“So what?”

“So don’t you have anything to say about it?”

He shut the book and placed it in my bag, I
assumed so that no one else – a random maid or concierge – would
stumble upon it.
 
“We will give this
back to Lilah when we see her, and I will ask her about it.
 
But it doesn’t change anything,
Charlotte, except now that we know it exists we might be forced to turn it over
to the prosecution.”
 

“That’s it?” I asked.
 
“You’re not going to read the rest of
it?”

“No.
 
It’s not my property.
 
And
it’s not your property, which means you won’t read it, either.”

“But don’t you want to know what else it says?”

“My obligation to Lilah is to provide her with
the best defense, no matter if I think she’s guilty or innocent.”

“But you still think she’s innocent.”

“Yes.”

I laughed, a trill, short little sound.
 
“Unbelievable.”

“Charlotte,” Noah said, his tone
softening.
 
“What is this really
about?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You are obviously upset about something more
than what you just read in that journal, or the fact that we have a difference
of opinion about a client.”

I averted my eyes from his.
 
I hated when he put me on the spot like
this, hated that he was allowed to ask me personal questions, that I was
supposed to be able to tell him my feelings as soon as he asked, or conversely,
to shut them down when he required it.

It was just another one of the ways he held all
the power in our relationship.
 
But
the most frustrating thing about it was that I
wanted
to tell him how I
was feeling.
 
I wanted him to
reassure me, to tell me everything was going to be okay.

I craved his attention, his trust, his
everything.

“I just think it’s a bad idea to become
responsible for her,” I said.
 
“There’s a difference between being a good lawyer and getting too caught
up in your client.”

“You got caught up in me,” Noah said softly.
 
“You put everything on the line for me,
Charlotte.
 
You saved me.”

“Yeah,” I laughed again.
 
“And look what happened.”

There it was.

It hung in the air between us, thick and
ugly.
 
I hated it.
 
I hated that jealousy corkscrewed my
heart every time I thought about Noah and Lilah being in this room together, thought
about how he wanted to protect her.
 
It was petty and it was stupid and I was a grown woman, but I hated him
protecting anyone but me.

“Charlotte,” Noah said.
 
“Come here.”

I shook my head.
 
“No,” I said.
 
“I’m too embarrassed.”

“About what?”

“About being jealous.
  
It’s an ugly, unattractive trait.”

“Charlotte,” he said.
 
“You do realize I just made you walk
down a hallway half naked because the thought of you talking to another man made
me so filled with rage I wanted to punch a hole through the wall?”