What He Shields (What He Wants Book Seventeen) (6 page)

“Why are you drinking?” I asked.

“Because I need something to take the edge
off.”

“Take the edge off what?”

“You disobeying me.
 
And what it does to me inside when I
think of someone hurting you.”

It was dim in here, the only light coming from
a couple of bulbs overhead and the small amount of outside light that was
coming in from the two tiny windows that lined the wall, up by the
ceiling.
 
“What is that?” I nodded
to the metal contraption.

“A cage.”

“No, not the cage.
 
What’s inside of it?”

“An impaler.”
 
He took another sip from his whiskey,
his eyes still studying my face carefully, waiting for my reaction.

The word,
impaler,
sounded scary and
foreign.

I took in a deep breath.
 
“And you want to put me in it?”

Noah nodded.

I licked my bottom lip.
 
“Why didn’t you tell me you owned an
apartment building?”
 

“I own a lot of buildings, Charlotte.
 
Here, overseas, in other parts of the
country… Commercial property and apartment buildings are a significant part of
my portfolio.”

“I thought we said no more secrets.”

He raised his eyebrows, and I could tell he was
going to bring up the fact that I’d kept a secret from him.

My eyes returned to the impaler.
 
“How does it work?”

He set his bottle of whiskey down on the floor
and crossed the room to the row of filing cabinets.
 
He unlocked one of the padlocks with a
key that was on his keychain, then reached inside and pulled out two separate
padlocks.

“You will get locked into it,” he said.
 
“Laying on your stomach, with your arms
and legs pulled back and cuffed in.”

The filing cabinet drawer was still open, and I
could see what was inside of it, a mix of file folders, papers, and what looked
like a picture.

I walked closer so I could get a better look,
and as I did, I felt Noah tense beside me.
 
His hand reached out and clamped down on the top of the drawer, but he
didn’t make a move to close it.

I reached past his hand and picked up the
picture.

It was of a woman standing on a beach, wearing
a huge brown straw hat, a pair of khaki capris, a flowing white shirt, and red
pedal pushers.
 
She was smiling, but
her eyes were fixated on something out of the camera’s lens, like someone was
about to take a picture of her but she got distracted by something or someone
else.

“Who is this?” I asked.

“My mother.”

I looked at him.
 
His face was a blank, but I could hear
the pain in his voice.
 
I placed the
picture back down in the drawer, and when I did, I caught sight of a file folder.
 
The tab read
The State vs. Noah
James, District Juvenile Court of New York, Case No. 34576.

I sucked in a long breath.
 
Noah’s court case.
 
The one where he’d
been arrested for hurting his stepfather.

Noah took the picture from my hand and placed it
back inside the cabinet then shut the drawer and locked it back up before I
could ask any more questions.
 
Then
he unlocked another drawer and pulled out a long leather switch.

“Noah –”

“Go stand over there, Charlotte.”
 
He pointed to the side of the room,
where a small area the concrete the floor was raised, creating a small
platform.

I thought about disobeying him, but there was
no denying it.
 
I was turned on, the
strength of his voice and the brazenness with which he was ordering me around
drawing me in and pulling me under his spell.

I went and stood on the platform.

“Take your shirt off.”

I reached down and gripped the sides of my
sweater, pulling it over my head slowly, the chill of the air instantly making
my skin prickle with goose bumps and my nipples harden under the sheerness of
my bra.
 
Noah had begun to unbutton
his shirt, revealing his chiseled body, the six-pack abs, the hard ridges of
his broad chest,
the
soft line of hair that started at
his navel and dipped below his belt.

“Noah,” I said, swallowing.
 
“I want to talk about what’s in the
filing cabinet.”

He grinned wickedly and trailed the switch over
the dusty floor, his eyes burning.
 
“You want to talk about what’s in that filing cabinet, Charlotte?”

“Yes.”

“Then take your skirt off, nice and slow so I
can see that ass.”

I turned around and reached for the side of my
skirt, my hands fumbling as I struggled with the zipper.

I turned around and tugged it off my hips nice
and slow, making sure to bend over as I did it, giving Noah a full view of my
ass and pussy as I did it.
 
Both
were bare, my panties taken by Noah in the elevator and not returned.
 

“God, you are fucking sexy,” Noah murmured, and
I felt the whip slid over my ass cheeks -- but he didn’t strike me with it,
just let me live in that space of anxious anticipation of wondering what my
punishment was going to be, how hard, how severe, how pleasurable.

I straightened back up and turned around,
stepped out of my
skirt which was pooled
around my
feet.

Noah took another pull from his whiskey bottle.

I swallowed nervously.

“In that filing cabinet, Charlotte,” he
said.
 
“Are the transcripts and
documents from my court
case.
 
All the disgusting details.”

He said it matter-of-factly, but I could tell
he didn’t like talking about it, that I was pushing him, not just with the way
I’d disobeyed him,
but
now with the fact that I was
trying to get him to talk about something he’d buried long ago.

“What are the disgusting details?” I asked,
bracing myself.

“Take off your bra, Charlotte.”

I reached behind me and unhooked my bra.
 
His eyes were locked on mine as he paced
back and forth across the dusty floor, a light sheen of sweat on his hard,
chiseled chest.
 

“Slowly, Charlotte.”

I slid the straps down my arms, letting my
breasts fall out of the cups slowly, watching Noah’s eyes burn with searing
desire.
 
Even now, even in the
fucked up, twisted situation we were in – him standing there with a whip,
chest heaving, ready to whip me for disobeying him, me trying to pry
information out of him by letting him have his way with me – I still
flushed with pleasure and excitement that I was able to have this effect on him,
that he loved me and my body, in all its imperfections, so much so that he got
excited and turned on just by looking at me.

I dropped by bra on the floor and stood there,
naked, my arms at my sides, my eyes on his, waiting for further instructions.

“The details, Charlotte,” he said, “are that my
stepfather beat my brother and I so badly that he broke my nose when I was
ten.
 
He broke my mother’s wrist,
her arm, her ankle.”

My heart clenched and tightness rose in my
chest.
 
“I didn’t know that,” I
said.
 
“I’m sorry.”

“Why are you apologizing?” he asked
sharply.
 
His hand was still wrapped
around the whip, his grip tightening.

“Because I didn’t know.”

“Never apologize, Charlotte.
 
Not for someone like that.”
 

He crossed the room until he was standing
behind me, and the rubber band around my chest squeezed tighter with emotion
and anticipation.
 

I hated that he had gone through something like
that, hated that it had probably been something even worse than what he was
telling me.

I hated that he felt the need to take his
emotions out on me physically and sexually whenever they bubbled up inside of
him.

And yet I loved him more in that moment than I
ever had, for everything he’d been through, for how I knew that even despite
the horrors he’d experienced he was a good, kind person.

“I will keep you safe,” he growled.
 
“I will do whatever it takes.”
 

The whip slashed through the air, landing on my
ass, and I gasped in surprise and pain.

“And you will not defy me.”
 
He crossed to the front of me, his chest
heaving with emotion and exertion.
 
The whip lashed my stomach, and I cried out, the skin there sensitive,
not used to being hurt that way.
 
“Tell me.”

“I won’t defy you, Noah.”
 

“Again.”

“I will not defy you.”
He whipped me again, this time across my breasts, the leather thrashing against
my nipples, leaving a sick flaming burn in its wake.

“Again,” he said, but he was lost in something
else, something bigger than me, some emotional time machine over which I had no
control.

He whipped me again and again and again, over
my pussy, my ass, working out his aggression and his emotions, punishing me
while relieving something for himself.
 
Only when he’d exhausted himself, when my pussy was wet and aching for
him, did he toss the whip onto the floor.

“Get in the cage, Charlotte.”
I stepped down from the podium and walked toward the cage.
 
When I was inside, I turned to look at
him, standing there, his eyes filled with pain.
 

Then he followed me into the cage, pushed me up
against the bars, the steel pressing into my back as his hands intertwined with
mine.

“Charlotte,” he groaned, his hands sliding over
my body, inspecting the marks he’d left on me.
 
“Charlotte, what have I done to you?”

“Shhh,” I said, putting my lips to his.
 
“Shh.”
 
Our mouths found each other, our kisses
intensifying, the two of us kissing with such passion and ferocity I couldn’t
have imagined it even existed, much less that it could be something I would
experience.
 

His hands moved over my body, and I reached
down and undid his belt, desperate to feel him.
 

He groaned as my hand wrapped around his shaft,
rock hard and ready for me.
 
I
squeezed and he groaned again and pushed me down to my knees.
 
I removed his pants and wrapped my mouth
around his cock, sucking on him hungrily, trying to soothe his emotional scars
with physical pleasure.

His hips thrust into me, his torso angled back
so that he could get a better angle on me, a better amount of friction.
 
I swirled my tongue around the head of
his dick the way I knew he liked and he groaned.
 

“Use your hand, baby.”

And I did, taking him in my hand, sucking and
stroking, our eyes locked as I watched the pleasure move over his face, watched
him slowly start to lose his grip on the control he clung to so dearly.
 

“I need to fuck you,” Noah groaned, and he
grabbed me around the waist, picking me up and pulling me to the ground.
 

I climbed on top of him before he could stop
me, and he grabbed my wrists, his nails sinking into my skin and as he started
to roll me over, but I dug my heels into the ground and clenched my thighs
together.
 

“No,” I whispered, leaning over him so that my
hair brushed against his chest.
 
“Please, Noah, I want to be on top of you.”

He’d never let me be on top before, had never
let me have any control when it came to what we did sexually.
 
Resistance crossed his face, but I
kissed him.

“Please,” I whispered.

He nodded, but his nails dug deeper into my
skin as I grabbed his dick and positioned it against my pussy before sliding
down on top of him, the pleasure of feeling him inside of me this way firing
through my body like a bullet from a gun, over and over and over again, each
shot of pleasure more intense than the one before it.

I began to rock on top of him, my clit sliding
over his shaft.
 
I tipped my head
back, and watched as his hooded gaze dropped down to the place we were
connected, the look on his face one of pure ecstasy.

He let me ride him for as long as he could take
it, for as long as he could let himself feel vulnerable.
 
It wasn’t long – maybe thirty
seconds, and then he grabbed my hips and pushed me down onto the dirty floor,
thrusting inside of me, his need taking over.