What He Shields Read online

  I shook my head. “No,” I said. “No way.” The thought of walking down the hallway, my breasts pushed up over the cups of my bra, my pussy exposed for any random hotel guest to see filled me with a thick, dark fear.

  The elevator doors began to close, but Noah reached out and pushed the button to keep them open

  “Charlotte,” Noah said. He reached out and tugged on the tie that held my hands together. He spun me around and pulled me to him, his hands cupping my bare ass. “Do you trust me?” he whispered, his thumb skating over my cheekbone.

  I groaned.

  I did trust him.

  And I knew that was what he wanted more than anything -- for me to trust him. But I also knew that his issues with trust went darker and deeper than anything I could begin to touch or heal.

  “Yes,” I said. “I trust you. But Noah –”

  He silenced me with another kiss, this one soft and sweet, a stark contrast to the deprivation and raw humiliation of what he was expecting of me.

  His hand wrapped around the dark material of his tie, and before I could protest again, he was leading me out of the elevator.

  He turned to look at me, looping the tie around his wrist like a short leash that trailed out from behind me. He walked backwards, and I followed him, my gaze locked on his, but the intensity was too much, and that, coupled with the fear of being caught, caused me to break his gaze and look around the hallway like a crazed animal desperate for escape.

  “Eyes on mine,” he commanded.

  I looked at him and bit the inside of my cheek to keep from crying out, whether in panic or ecstasy, I wasn’t sure.

  “Arch your back.”

  I did as he demanded, arching my back and pushing my tits out. An ache pulsed deep in my center, my angst and trepidation mixing with the incredible pleasure I got from knowing I was pleasing Noah, of knowing that I was submitting to him, turning my body over to him to use in whatever way he deemed necessary.

  “Good girl,” he said wickedly.

  The hallway seemed impossibly long, and I had no idea what room Lilah had been staying in, which only heightened the shivery anticipation.

  I could hear the soft hum of a television as we passed one of the rooms, the murmur of male voices in another one. There were guests in this hotel, guests who could come out of their rooms at any time.

  We reached the end of the hall, and Noah turned right, which led into another corridor, my feet sinking into the thick cream-and-maroon patterned carpet.

  I moaned in frustration at the thought of having to walk down a whole other hallway. I opened my mouth, to tell him to stop, to let him know it was too much. But he shot me a warning look, and I kept my mouth shut.

  The ache between my legs grew sharper.

  Finally, just when I thought I surely couldn’t take it anymore, we reached Room 5634.

  Noah reached into his pocket and pulled out a key card, slid it slowly into the lock.

  The box flashed red.

  Card denied.

  I bit my lip, visions of Noah making me wait here, my skirt hiked up and my bra pushed down, while he went downstairs to figure out what was wrong with the key swirled through my brain.

  But he tried again, and this time, the box flashed a beautiful bright green.

  I let out a sigh of relief as Noah opened the door and pulled me in by his tie.

  As soon as the door closed behind him, he pulled me to him, crushing me against his chest, my breasts flattening against the smooth plains of his chest.

  “You will not disobey me again, Charlotte. Do you understand?”

  I nodded, my pulse pounding, the blood rushing through my ears.

  “We will talk about my rules and expectations for you, and we will draw up a contract if necessary. But in the meantime, you will do as I say, you will belong to me, and you will not defy me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He reached behind my back and untied my wrists.

  “Good.” He took his tie and placed it around his collar, tying it into a tight Windsor knot. Then he slipped his suit jacket back on.

  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 prio
rs, 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?”

  I smiled just a tiny bit.

  He sat down on the bed next to me and gathered me in his strong arms, pulling me into his lap, making me feel small and protected. I buried my head in his neck and inhaled his scent, expensive cologne and Noah and home. He stroked my palm and slid his fingers up my forearm lightly.

  “Charlotte,” he said. “I love you. You are everything to me. Everything.”

  His lips found mine as I melted against him, tasting his minty breath. He pulled away and I curved my body into his as he held me tight, one hand against the small of my back, the other holding my hand.

  “There is no one on this Earth, in this universe, that could compare to you. You are beautiful, intelligent, amazing. You are everything I have ever wanted, everything I could have ever dreamed.” He tilted my chin up and forced me to look him in the eye. “I never imagined in my whole life I would
find someone like you, and that if I did, you could ever love me back.”

  His eyes were on mine, so intoxicating, so intense, that it was almost too much. Just being close to him set my body and my heart bursting into hot flames, igniting inside my stomach and licking their way down to my center.

  “I have not been doing a good job making you feel loved,” he said, and it was almost as if he were talking to himself.

  Darkness clouded his face, and I knew he was blaming himself for my insecurities. I knew his tendency was to turn everything back onto himself, to self-loathe, and I hated that he was blaming himself for something that was all me.

  “No,” I said. “No, you are doing a good job. I do feel loved, Noah.” I put my head against his chest, hearing the strong, steady beat of his heart, and I was instantly calmed.

  He shook his head and swallowed, his eyes softening, the emotion on his face evident. “It’s a case, Charlotte,” he said. ‘That’s all it is.” He pulled back and looked me in the eye. “This is how it works in big cases. Casey Anthony, George Zimmerman… these people were in the care of their lawyers, because it’s often the only safe place for them to be.”

  I felt the side of my mouth twitch into a smile. “Are you saying Lilah is like Casey Anthony or George Zimmerman?”

  “I’m not comparing her to those people. But her case has the possibility of becoming just as big. There have already been calls.”

  “From who?”

  “The Times, the Post, the Star.” He shook his head and pushed my hair back from my face. His touch was soothing, his hand warm. “Please, I don’t want you to worry about Lilah.”

  I nodded.

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise you, Noah.”

  I fell into his eyes as he kissed me again, his hands tangling in my hair. “God, you are so beautiful,” he said. “I exist just to make you happy.” He shook his head, and looked at me in that way of his, like he was looking at me in wonder and awe. “Let’s get out of here,” he said after a moment.

  “I thought we had to wait for Lilah.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Clementine can take care of Lilah. If she finds her, she’ll call me.”