What I Want (What I Want, Book One) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) Page 4

  “Oh,” she said when she saw the man standing next to me. “I didn’t realize you had company.” She held her hand out. “I’m Cora.”

  I took another sip of my drink as disappointment flooded my body. Now that Cora was here, I would be left in the dust. I knew it was ridiculous – I’d just met this man, after all. And to be perfectly honest, I didn’t have time for a relationship, or even a hook-up. I was in my first year of law school, and it was demanding and crazy – I loved every minute of it, but it didn’t leave me much time for a personal life.

  “I was just leaving,” the man said. He didn’t offer an introduction of his own. In fact, he didn’t really look at Cora at all. He just drained the rest of his drink, then turned around and returned to the blondes who’d been patiently waiting for him.

  “What a jerk,” Cora said, obviously offended by the fact that the man hadn’t fallen for her charms. She looked down at my drink and wrinkled her delicate nose. “What are you drinking? Whiskey?”

  “Yes,” I said defiantly, and took another sip, even though my throat was still burning from the last one.

  “Well, come on, you need to dance.”

  She grabbed my arm and pulled me onto the dance floor, where I spent the next hour dancing and trying not be obvious about the fact that I was looking for the man who’d drawn an X on my arm. But I didn’t see him again. He must have left the bar soon after Cora interrupted us.

  Finally, at around nine o’clock, I decided that I’d had enough.

  I told everyone I had to be up early the next morning, which wasn’t a lie. The library was waiting for me.

  “Are you sure?” Kristin, another girl from our class, asked. She was drunk and slurring her words. “You should come with us to the next place.” She turned to Cora. “Cora, we’re going to the next place, right?”

  “Yes, in just a minute,” Cora said. She’d found a man with a shaved head who’d eaten a candy off her bracelet and had decided to sign her ample cleavage instead of her arm as the instructions had indicated.

  I said my goodbyes and slipped out of the bar.

  Once on the street, I breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn’t particularly close to those people, and I’d always had a hard time partaking in small talk. Once you asked someone what they did for a living and where they lived, what else were you supposed to ask? There was nowhere for the conversation to go. I was a lot more comfortable in small groups, where people were a little more open.

  The city was pulsing with life as people ducked into bars and strolled down the sidewalk, enjoying the late spring night. In fact, the street was so crowded, that at first I didn’t realize someone was walking right next to me. I quickened my stride, but he matched his to mine. I glanced over, annoyed, expecting to see a homeless person, or perhaps a drunken bargoer who would try to engage me in conversation.

  My stomach flipped and my heart jumped into my throat. It was the stranger from the bar. Mr. X.

  “Hello,” he said. His voice was smooth, but there was a huskiness to it that I didn’t remember hearing before.

  “Hi,” I said. I swallowed. Part of me was unnerved and a little scared. Obviously this man had waited outside the bar for me to leave. The other part of me was filled with excitement.

  “Didn’t feel like continuing the party?” Mr. X asked me cheerfully.

  “No. I, um, have to be up early tomorrow.”

  “On a Saturday?” He seemed surprised by this, which didn’t make much sense. With the way he was dressed, I just assumed he was another lawyer or perhaps worked in finance. He shouldn’t have been surprised by the fact that I had to be up early on a Saturday.

  “Yes.”

  My original plan had been to grab a cab and take it back to my apartment. My little studio was fifteen blocks away, and I wasn’t in the mood to walk that far, even though the night was warm. My feet were killing me from the heels I was wearing. But now that this man was beside me, I didn’t want our time together to end. I was willing to keep walking if it meant we could continue our conversation.

  We turned the corner onto a side street, and the crowd began to thin out. There were no bars or restaurants in this area, and most of the retail stores were closed.

  A second later, the man grabbed my hand and pulled me into a space between the buildings.

  “What are you doing?” I asked as he pushed his body up against mine. I reached out and tried to push him away, but he was too strong, his chest rock solid. My nerve endings were on fire, every sense on high alert as I breathed in his scent, a heady mix of alcohol and cologne.

  He didn’t answer, just gave me a devilish grin before taking a few steps back. “If you want to go, go.” His tone made it clear that he knew I wasn’t going anywhere.

  My breath was coming in short gasps.

  He licked his lips slowly and then his gaze traveled up my body, like he was trying to decide just exactly what to do with me.

  He didn’t move for what seemed like an agonizingly long time. We just stood there, our gazes locked on each other. He was biding his time, I could tell, waiting for me to leave, waiting for me to decide I couldn’t handle whatever it was he was about to do to me. My head was screaming at me to move, to run, to get away. My body was screaming the opposite. So I stood my ground. And finally, after what seemed like forever, he took a step back toward me.

  He grabbed my shoulders and ran his hands down my arms and over the X he’d drawn there earlier. He smiled in satisfaction at his branding before raising his eyes back up to meet my gaze.

  “Right now,” he rasped. “You are mine.”

  And then his lips were on mine. The kiss was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. He tasted like mint and alcohol. His lips were soft but his skin had a rough stubble, and the difference in sensations sent a burst of heat through my whole being. My nipples tightened as he pushed his body up against mine, his tongue probing my mouth.

  He broke away, then reached down and grabbed my hand, pulling my right arm up over my head. He repeated this maneuver with my left arm, until both my hands were above my head and up against the wall of the building behind me.

  He held me there with one hand, and used his other hand to pull down the top of my dress, then grinned devilishly as he yanked my bra down. My nipples tightened even more as the cold air hit my skin, and I bit my lip to keep from crying out.

  Part of me knew this was wrong, and my brain screamed at me to tell him to stop, to run, to get out of there. But my body was on fire. I had never wanted someone as much as I wanted this man, right now, in this moment.

  He traced his fingertip over my nipple, and I moaned.

  “Shhhh,” he commanded, moving his finger to my lips. “Quiet.”

  I was afraid if I made another sound, he would leave, so I bit my lip to keep from moaning again.

  He paused for a moment, and then turned me around so that I was facing the building. He pushed me up against the wall, my cheek hitting the coarse brick.

  My hands were still above my head, and he reached up and grabbed the candy bracelet around my wrist. He pulled the elastic band into a figure eight, and slipped the other loop around my other wrist, effectively tying my hands together.

  He tugged tightly on the elastic, using it to hold me in place.

  His other hand reached down and pulled my dress up, and then I felt him pulling my panties to the side.

  “My God,” I gasped before I could stop myself.

  His hand grasped my mound, and then he slid a finger inside of me. “You’re wet for me. You’ve been wet for me since I drew that X on you, haven’t you?”

  No one had ever talked to me like this before. It was both exciting and frightening at the same time. He pulled the makeshift rope around my wrists tighter. “Weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, I was wet for you since you drew on me at the bar.”

  His mouth was right against my ear, and the delicious tickle
of his breath made me shiver. He undid his pants, and his cock pushed up against me. It was rock hard and felt huge. My heart sped up at the thought that maybe I wouldn’t be able to take him.

  “I’m going to fuck you now,” he breathed into my ear. And then he was inside me, filling me with one stroke. There was a brief flash of pain, but I was so wet, so turned on, that it only lasted for a moment before I began to feel pleasure. I tried to push back, to take him inside me as far as he could go, but he grabbed the bracelet and pulled my arms back, shoving his body up against mine, letting me know he was in charge.

  He fucked me hard, in and out, faster and faster, giving me his entire shaft, harder and harder, faster and faster, until my body felt as if it was going to ignite.

  “Come for me,” he commanded, and no sooner were the words out of his mouth then I did come for him, my orgasm taking over my whole body, causing me to moan in pleasure.

  He kept going, pumping into me, until I felt him come inside me.

  He held me up against the wall for another moment before letting my hands go. There were marks where the elastic of the bracelet had cut into my flesh. My breath was coming in short bursts, my heart beating so fast I could feel the blood rushing through my body.

  Every one of my nerves was on alert, stimulated so intensely it was almost too much to bear.

  Mr. X pushed my hair to the side and kissed me softly on the back of the neck.

  “What’s your name?” he whispered.

  “Charlotte,” I said. “Charlotte Holloway.”

  “Charlotte,” he repeated the word, and my name, which had always sounded old-fashioned and plain, now sounded sexy and dangerous.

  A second later, he was gone.

  I could still feel his lips on the back of my neck as I walked toward the subway. The air felt suddenly colder as I stepped onto the platform.

  People crowded around me, talking and laughing, most of them in good moods after a night out.

  But all I could think about was him.

  My face flamed, thinking about what I’d let him do to me. I wondered what everyone on the subway car would think if they knew I’d just let a stranger take me in a back alley. It was so dirty, so bad, so out of character from what I would usually do. It wasn’t even a one-night stand! A one-night stand had to take a whole night.

  When I got home, I paused outside my apartment door and said a quick prayer that my roommate wouldn’t be home. Nicola was an actress and a dancer, and it wasn’t out of the ordinary for her to be out at night. Her and her theatre friends liked to sleep all day and then stay out all night.

  Her schedule suited me fine. I liked having the apartment to myself, liked not having to battle for the bathroom or worry about noise when I was trying to fall asleep. I’d lucked out when I’d found this apartment – a lot of my law school classmates had ended up with four roommates or an apartment in a bad part of town. My apartment was tiny, but it was clean and it was close to campus.

  I heated up some ramen noodles and ate them in front of the tv, trying to keep my mind on an episode of Bill Maher. But I could still only think about him, about what I’d done, his hands on me, the way he’d branded me. I took a shower but made sure not to wash the X off my wrist. It was the only memory I had a of him, and I knew it was silly, but I wanted to keep it.

  It was midnight when I got into bed, and I tossed and turned for a while until finally falling into a fitful sleep.

  My cell phone woke me a few hours later.

  I groped for my phone, my heart pounding. There were only two people who would be calling me at this time of night – my mom, or Josh.

  It was Josh.

  “Worthington’s here,” he said. “His office. Seems big.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  Thirty minutes later, at three-thirty in the morning, I was rushing up the steps of Hinton Hall, heading for Professor Worthington’s office.

  When I got there, Josh was sitting on one of the wooden benches that lined the hallway.

  “Nice outfit,” he commented wryly.

  I was dressed in a black pencil skirt and a silky white blouse. Worthington was a bit sexist, and if you wanted to get ahead in his class and you were female, you had to try harder. Which meant you didn’t show up looking like a slob, not even at three-thirty in the morning.

  “What’s the situation?” I asked, ignoring his comment.

  “He came in right before I called you. Seemed agitated He had a coffee.”

  I nodded.

  Worthington taught our intro to torts class, but he was a hotshot lawyer in his own right. He would sometimes use law students for research or to run grunt work for him on his cases. The experience was irreplaceable. Worthington was notorious for picking whoever was closest to him to help – he had his own practice and didn’t seem to have time to choose students based on their merits.

  So Josh and I sometimes took turns sitting in the big chairs in the lobby of Hinton, where Worthington had his office. We’d study and hope that maybe we’d run into Worthington when he had something going on.

  “Was he –”

  The door to Worthington’s office flew open.

  He saw us standing there, and his face set into a wry smile. “You two,” he said, pointing to us. “I need you both.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. My heart sped up and my palms felt twitchy. After just a few weeks in law school, I was finally going to see some action. I pulled out a notebook and got ready to take notes.

  “There’s been a murder,” Worthington said. He drained his coffee then crushed the empty Starbucks cup in his hand and tossed it toward the trash can in the hallway. It bounced off the rim and onto the floor. “We have a client, an important one. He hasn’t been arrested yet, but for reasons I won’t get into, he’s going to be a suspect.” He stared both of us down, and I forced myself not to move. Worthington was a hotshot lawyer – the kind of lawyer who commanded hundreds of thousands in fees. Whatever this case was, it was big.

  “The client is high profile,” Worthington went on. “He’s insisted on meeting whoever it that’s going to be working with him.” He stared us all down again, his gaze icy. “Of course I’ll have people at my office on this. But if he is charged, we’re going to need all the help we can get. Above all, I need to be assured of your discretion.”

  “Of course,” Josh and I said.

  “Noah Cutler,” Worthington said, “is the client.”

  I forced myself not to have a reaction. But of course I knew who Noah Cutler was. He was a lawyer in his own right, but not the kind you’d find listed in the white pages. He was a certain kind of lawyer – the kind of lawyer you called when you were in a lot of trouble, the kind of lawyer you could count on to take care of things for you, on many different levels.

  Rumors had swirled about him for years—that he wasn’t afraid to break laws, that he was going to be disbarred, that he took bribes and was in bed with the mob. He was constantly getting reprimanded, constantly getting held in contempt of court. But he wasn’t sleazy – in fact, he was a legend.

  “Why aren’t his own people working on this?” Josh asked.

  He was rewarded with a smoldering look from Worthington. “Because it’s a conflict of interest,” Worthington said. “He’s not going to have his own office handling his affairs.” He sighed. “Listen, the less you two know about the details the better. I don’t need you asking a bunch of dumb questions.”

  “What do you need from us?” I asked. There was no way I was going to let Josh ruin this for me by trying to play Mr. Bigshot Lawyer.

  “Right now, I’m going to need you to go to Mr. Cutler’s office in midtown and meet with him. He wants to meet each of you in person to make sure he’s comfortable working with you.”

  “Now?” Josh asked.

  “Yes, now,” Worthington said, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe our stupidity. “I’ll text you the address.”

  Ten minutes later, Josh and I were in th
e back of a black town car, speeding toward Midtown. Josh was on his iPad, making notes and highlighting articles. He wasn’t sharing any of it with me. Josh and I weren’t exactly close friends. In fact, we weren’t really friends at all. We had a business arrangement. Once we’d realized we’d both been spending all our free time studying in the lobby of Hinton, we’d come up with an arrangement. If either one of us saw something going down with Worthington, we’d call the other.

  It was nice of Josh to call me tonight. He could have gone back on our deal and just kept the information to himself. But now that he’d done that, it was every man for himself.

  Which meant I needed to find out everything I could about Noah Cutler.

  I pulled up his bio on Wikipedia.

  Not much about his early life, except that he grew up in Camden, New Jersey. Single mother. Scholarship to Rutgers, then Harvard law school. He started his own firm as soon as he graduated, even though he’d fielded offers from most of the big firms.

  I scrolled down, making mental notes, wondering what he was like, if he was going to grill me, ask me stupid questions like “How many buses are in the United States?” Interviewers loved to ask questions like that. They said it was because they wanted to see how your thought process, figure out how your brain worked. But I suspected they just liked to see you squirm.

  I scrolled further down the screen.

  And then I gasped.

  Out loud.

  There was a picture of Noah Cutler on the Wikipedia page.

  I recognized him immediately. The cool blue eyes, the dark hair, the smoldering gaze, the tiny little smile that made you think he was amused by something.

  Noah Cutler was Mr. X.

  I wanted to leave. I didn’t want to go in, I didn’t want to come face to face with him. How could I?