What He Commits (What He Wants, Book Thirteen) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) Read online

  WHAT HE COMMITS (What He Wants, Book Thirteen)

  by Hannah Ford

  Copyright 2015, Hannah Ford, all rights reserved. This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  NOAH

  I wanted to kill him.

  As soon as the mask came off, I wanted to beat him until he was dead. I’d wanted to kill him from the beginning, wanted to hurt and maim whoever it was that had put Charlotte in danger. But seeing Josh’s face caused the rage inside of me to roar to life, like a furnace being turned on for the winter.

  The heat and fury blew through me, and before I knew what I was doing I’d picked him up and thrown him against the wall of the hallway, so hard I could hear his ribs rattle. The sound gave me a sick satisfaction.

  Scenes from that long-ago night with my stepfather flashed through my mind, the solidness of the bat in my hands, the shattering of his knees as I slammed the heavy wood into his legs.

  I’d thrown up later that night, had walked outside and vomited into the bushes as my adrenaline dissipated and the realization of what I’d done had hit me. The present and the past morphed together now, the scent of vomit filling my nostrils, the sound of Audi’s screams from that night echoing through the hallway, Josh’s face morphing into that of my stepfather’s.

  For a moment I thought I was going insane, thought I was going to have a break with reality that would end with me killing Josh, with me losing my shit right here and beating him to death. The irony wasn’t lost on me -- I’d spent all this time trying to prove to Charlotte that I wasn’t a killer, and yet here I was, about to kill someone right in front of her.

  It was that thought that snapped me back, the watercolor painting of my mind sharpening until everything was back in focus.

  The smell of vomit was replaced with the musty smell of Force, my stepfather’s face turned back into Josh’s, and Audi’s screams disappeared until all I could hear was the beat of the music from the main room.

  Still, I kept my grip on Josh’s shirt, pushed him up against the wall until he was forced to turn his face away from me.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” I spat.

  “Relax,” he said, trying his best to sound cocky.

  I loosened my grip on his shirt, and his hands balled into fists like he was going to hit me. The thought was laughable. I grabbed him again and slammed him back into the wall.

  “Noah!” Charlotte yelled from behind me. She was clawing at my shoulders, trying to pull me off of Josh. She was scared of what I might do, scared of how far I would go. Scared I would kill him.

  I grinned at Josh, then leaned in close to him so he could hear everything I was about to say.

  “She doesn’t have to worry,” I said. “I’m not going to kill you.”

  He rolled his eyes, but I could feel his heart beating fast, could tell he was scared.

  “But I am going to fuck you up real good,” I said and then I released him. Before he could react, I pulled back and punched him in the face.

  He immediately fell to the ground.

  I smiled.

  Maybe I would kill him after all.

  CHARLOTTE

  “Noah!” I screamed again as Josh’s body crumpled to the ground. I was grabbing at Noah’s arms, trying to stop him, but it was futile -- he was made of steel. There was nothing I could do. If Noah wanted to hurt Josh, he would.

  Noah turned and looked at me, our eyes locking on each other, and he nodded shortly, letting me know he wasn’t going to hurt Josh. At least not too badly.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Josh asked, getting up from the ground. His nose was bleeding, his right eye already swelling. “You can’t just go around punching people, you stupid asshole.”

  Noah went for him again, but I put my hand on his arm. “Stop,” I said. As much as I hated Josh, as much as I wanted to see him get his comeuppance, beating him to a pulp would serve no purpose. This time, miraculously, Noah listened.

  I turned to Josh. “What are you doing here?” I demanded. “Why were you watching me?”

  “Because you’re sexy,” he said, all cocky like, and Noah pushed forward and punched him in the stomach.

  Josh doubled over and groaned. “Fuck,” he swore. He spit onto the ground, a thick pool of red blood and dark grit.

  “You called me,” I said. “You called me and you killed Katie.”

  “What?” Josh said. He was leaning against the wall now, still holding his stomach. “I didn’t call you.”

  “Stop lying!” I screamed. “You called me and you threatened me and you said you were going to kill me.”

  He shook his head. “You’re crazy. I didn’t call you.”

  “Then how did you know I was here?” I had my hand on Noah’s arm as he stood there, silent, the rage radiating off of him so strongly I could almost see it, hazy and shimmering in the air.

  “I followed you,” Josh said.

  Noah took another step toward him, but I tightened my grip on his wrist, and he stopped. But I wasn’t sure how long I would be able to keep him calm. Calm wasn’t even the right word – he was anything but calm. He was pulsing with heat and energy and violent hate.

  “You followed me?” I repeated.

  “I was worried about you, Charlotte. Julia told me how much time you’ve been spending with Noah, about the reporter that showed up at the apartment. She told me she’s afraid for you.”

  Noah pushed his shoulders back and a vein throbbed in his neck.

  “So you followed me here because you were worried,” I said, not believing it for a second.

  “Yes.” Josh shook his head. “I saw you come in here with him and I wanted to make sure you were okay. When you went into that room, I thought he was going to hurt you.”

  “And you were so worried that you went into the room next door to watch?” I asked sarcastically.

  “It was an accident. I went into the room next door to see if there was anything in there I could use to help you. And then I saw the holes in the wall, so I looked.”

  “How long were you watching me?” I whispered.

  “A while,” he said. And then he gave me a look, that same depraved, controlled look he’d given me the night I’d caught him in my room, jerking off into my panties. The industrial lights flickered overhead, illuminated his face and making him look even more sinister and perverted than he had that night. Then his voice softened and he looked at me. “You looked so beautiful.”

  That was it.

  Noah snapped.

  He wrenched out of my grasp and pitched forward, punching Josh square in the jaw. Josh fell back to the ground as Noah descended on him, punching him in the face over and over, until bright red blood covered Josh’s skin and spattered the concrete floor.

  “Stop!” I yelled. “Noah, stop!”

  Noah punched him a couple more times before I was able to get him to stop, then stood up and kicked Josh in the ribs. “You sick fuck,” Noah growled. “You sick little bastard.”

  “Noah,” I said quietly. “Noah, please. Just… let’s call the police.”

  Josh staggered to his feet, put his hand to his mouth, and pulled it back, looking at the blood. He shook his head. “Oh, I’m the sick fuck? What about you two? Fucking in public like that? Blindfolded and chained up? You’re the sick one, Charlotte. You’re a fucked up little whore, wanting to be with him.”

  Noah went after him again, but I grabbed him and held him back.

  I was really scared n
ow.

  Scared of what Noah might do to him.

  Josh must have been too, because a second later, he took off down the hall, hobbled over and limping.

  “You sick little whoooorreeee,” he yelled as he went, the singsong tone of his voice echoing off the walls.

  I started after him, pulled my phone out and began dialing.

  “What are you doing?” Noah demanded.

  “We have to call the police,” I said. “We have to call them and tell them what happened.”

  Noah shook his head, reached out and took my phone out of my hand. “We can’t call the police, Charlotte.”

  I stared at him, my mouth agape. “What do you mean we can’t call the police?”

  “I mean we cannot call the police.” He began walking back down the hallway in the same direction Josh had gone, the same direction we’d came from, and I followed him. His gait and pace were slow, controlled. If he was trying to catch up with Josh, he wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

  “Why not? We can tell them – ”

  He turned around, his eyes blazing. “We can tell them what, Charlotte? That we got an anonymous call from someone who was threatening you, and instead of calling the police, we went to a BDSM club, where we began fucking in a side room? That we saw someone watching us so I followed him and beat the crap out of him?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “No, that’s not what we’re going to say, we’re going to say that we didn’t know what to do and so –”

  “And so what? We came to a club to fuck?” He shook his head. “We can’t do that, Charlotte, they’ll think we’re insane.”

  “We can just explain to them – ”

  “Stop!” he raged. “We cannot just explain anything to them. This is a BDSM club, Charlotte, things like what just happened are commonplace here.” He shook his head. “Which is why I wanted to call the police before.”

  “So this is my fault?”

  “It’s not anyone’s fault.” He was pacing the hallway now, and I hated being back here, hated being in this hallway, in this building, in this club. The place on my stomach where Audi had sliced me open began to throb, and I took in a deep breath and let it out, telling myself that it was just in my head, that my body was just reacting to my fear.

  “That little shit planned this whole thing,” Noah said. “He has us right where he wants us. He knows there’s nothing we can do, knows we can’t call the police, knows we have no evidence to show what he’s done.”

  He exploded a second later, letting out a guttural scream that came from deep within him. He punched the wall, his hand exploding into the concrete.

  “Noah!” I yelled. “Noah, stop! You’re scaring me.”

  He stopped and turned to look at me, his broad chest heaving with effort, color high on his cheeks. His eyes met mine, and I saw the pain that lived inside of him, bright and raw. Longing filled my body, and I wished more than anything I could take his pain away, that I could push my body close to his and tell him everything was going to be okay. But that would be a lie. And even if it wasn’t, whatever was inside of him went far deeper than what had just happened with Josh.

  “I want to go,” I said. “Please, can we go?” My voice was cracking, the lump in my throat a precursor to the tears that were pricking the back of my eyes.

  Noah nodded and took my hand, then began leading me down the hall, navigating the twisting pathways and tangled corridors. As we got closer to the main room of Force, the pounding music got louder, until I couldn’t tell the difference between the beat of the bass and the sound of my own heartbeat.

  When we got to the door of the room where that waitress had been, I stopped.

  “What?” Noah asked, his hand tightening on mine. “Charlotte, what is it?”

  “I…” I hesitated. “There was a girl in this room.”

  “What?”

  I reached out and touched the doorknob softly, tried turning it with my hand. It wasn’t locked. But still, I didn’t open the door. “She was in this room. She told me she needed help. She said someone was trying to kill her.”

  Noah frowned. “Who said that?”

  “The waitress, the one who got us our drinks earlier.”

  Noah reached out and turned the doorknob, pushed the door open. I took a small step inside and glanced around. The room looked like some kind of classroom – there were desks set up in rows, the kind of desks that had metal chairs attached to them and tops that opened to fit books and papers. There was a chalkboard hanging on the front wall, but whatever had been written on it had been completely erased, leaving only faint marks and the smell of chalk dust.

  Around the perimeter of the room was a heavy wooden baseboard. Every few feet, shackles with heavy black chains were attached to the wall.

  But there was no one there.

  The room was empty.

  I took another step inside, but Noah grabbed my shoulder. “No,” he said. “We’re leaving.”

  “But she needed help.”

  His eyes moved around the room. “They were probably getting her ready for the slave auction,” he said. “Sometimes this is a part of it.”

  “Sometimes what is part of it?”

  “The element of fear, Charlotte. The idea that the girls are being forced into their slavery. It’s a turn on for many people.”

  He gave me a pointed look, and I knew what he was thinking about. That scene that had unfolded up on the stage earlier tonight, the girl in the doctor’s office, her protests as the doctor’s hands moved inside her gown and groped her. I’d been turned on by it, and Noah was pointing out that it was a common fantasy. That the girls brought to the auction may have been instructed to play a part, to act as if they were being held against their will, that it may have heightened their pleasure along with that of the men who purchased them.

  “But she wasn’t acting out a fantasy,” I said. I moved forward into the room, and this time, Noah didn’t try to stop me. A shot of fear shocked my spine, moving through my body, and a voice inside of me screamed at me to stop, screamed that I was playing with danger if I decided to keep going. I took another step anyway, and my nose was hit with the scent of antiseptic. It was a strange smell to encounter in an underground room of a BDSM club, and I recoiled.

  “Charlotte,” Noah said, his voice laced with impatience. “You don’t know if that girl was acting out a fantasy or not.”

  “She wasn’t.” I closed my eyes for a moment, remembering how her eyes had widened in fear, the way she’d gasped and pleaded with me, the way a meaty hand had hooked around her leg and dragged her back into the room.

  I felt the sharp bite of her nails as they dug into the skin of my ankle. I looked down at the marks she’d left.

  “See?” I pointed them out to Noah. “She scratched me.”

  He looked down at my ankle, his fingertip running softly over my skin as he traced the scratch. “She did this to you?”

  “Yes. She reached for me and she told me they were trying to kill her, she begged for my help.”

  Noah shook his head. “You got this from Josh.”

  “Josh didn’t touch me.”

  “Then you got it earlier, from me.”

  “No. I didn’t, Noah. I got it from her. She was in trouble, and it wasn’t part of some scene or fantasy.”

  “Charlotte,” he said. “I’m sure that whatever you saw here tonight was upsetting to you. But these things are commonplace.”

  “No.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “That girl was in trouble, Noah.”

  He reached for my hand. “Come on,” he said. “Please, Charlotte. I need to get you home.”

  His fingers wrapped around mine, strong and comforting. I was hit with a wave of exhaustion so fierce that it took all my strength to not just collapse against his chest right then and there.

  I wanted to stay, but there was nothing I could do for that girl now, even if I wanted to. And I was so tired.

  “Okay,” I said finally. “Tak
e me home.”

  ***

  Her face haunted me the entire way home. Her high cheekbones, her gaunt face, the hollowness of her eyes. She looked dead.

  But so had those other girls, the ones you saw going to the auction the last time you were there. And Noah had seen those girls too, and he hadn’t seemed to think there was anything out of the ordinary.

  Had they been drugged? Or had they been taught to be so submissive that they’d learned to keep their expressions completely blank, so blank that even their eyes showed no trace of feeling?

  Was that going to happen to me? Did Noah want me to be so submissive that I would cease to have my own thoughts and feelings, right down to the expression on my face?

  “What is it, Charlotte?” Noah asked when he caught me looking at him from the passenger seat.

  “Nothing.” I turned away, toward the window, watching as the city rushed past. The night was warm and humid, the air causing a film of condensation to appear on the glass. I used my hand to wipe some of it away, but it began to fog up again almost immediately, the city blurring into a misty abstract painting.

  Noah pulled into the underground garage of his building, and I got out of the car before he could cross over and open the door for me. He gave me a look of disapproval, but I didn’t care. He took out the jacket I’d left in his car earlier and wrapped it around my shoulders before leading me into his building through the garage door.

  I leaned against him, enjoying the feel of his strong, muscular body as I allowed him to take me inside, to bring me into his living room and sit me down on the couch.

  “You need to eat,” he said.

  “No.” The thought of food made my stomach turn.

  “I’ll make you some soup.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  He ignored me and walked into the kitchen, where I could hear the sounds of him opening cupboards and rummaging through cabinets. I sat there on the couch, starting to get angry and frustrated.

  He’d said we could do this my way, and now he was trying to control everything again.

  I walked into the kitchen and watched as he pulled a can of soup from the cupboard.