What He Provokes (What He Wants, Book Eighteen) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) Read online

  His kiss and his fingers inside of me, along with the pressure of the collar around my neck, made me want to cum almost immediately and I felt my pussy clench around his fingers.

  “Already, baby?” he teased, sliding his fingers out slowly, his thumb lazily rubbing over my clit. “Not yet.”

  He picked me up and set me down on the table. He pushed the champagne and food off to the side, then pulled me toward him so that my ass was perched right at the edge of the table, my legs hanging over the side.

  He pushed my legs open slowly, and then grabbed my panties, pulling them down over my thighs, down my legs to my ankles and over my toes until they were off. Hot shivers moved through my whole body.

  Then he pushed my ankles back, toward the legs of the table, and then I felt the bite of metal against my skin.

  There were shackles attached to this table.

  He cuffed my ankles in, forcing my legs to stay apart.

  Noah stood up and put my hands behind me, palms down, on the table, then placed his hands on top of mine. “Do not move your hands,” he growled.

  I nodded.

  His tongue ran over my lower lip, and I shivered as he continued licking down my body, blazing a warm trail down my neck, over my cleavage, sucking my nipple into his mouth through the sheer material of my shirt.

  A muffled cry escaped my lips and I closed my eyes.

  “Eyes on me,” he demanded as he knelt before me, surveying my spread legs. I looked down at him. His eyes blazed as he leaned down and blew on my pussy, his breath warm. Goosebumps prickled across my whole body.

  He parted my center with his fingers, spreading me back so that my clit was exposed to him, then he leaned down and sucked on it softly.

  I cried out and closed my eyes again.

  He removed his mouth and slapped his open palm against my spread open pussy.

  “Charlotte. Do not take your eyes off me.”

  I forced my gaze back onto his and moaned in torture.

  “I want to see your pretty face while I lick your pussy.” His tongue returned to my cunt, sliding inside of me, pushing into me, fucking me. One of his strong hands pushed against my belly, holding me down, leaving me even more helpless than I already was, while he licked and sucked and took me to the edge and back.

  His other hand moved over my pussy, sliding inside of me, fucking, rubbing, grazing, varying the pressure until I felt like I was losing my mind.

  The whole time his eyes were on mine as I watched him eat me, watched the lust burn in his eyes while his mouth and fingers worked me over, working in tandem like an orchestra conductor leading to a crescendo.

  It didn’t take long.

  “I’m going to make you come,” he said, grinning at me devilishly. “Then I’m going to fuck you and make you come again. And again. And again.”

  I gasped, my chest heaving with desire as he returned his mouth to my pussy, his tongue on my clit, his fingers inside of me, spreading me.

  My pussy clenched around him, and my orgasm roared through me.

  I started to close my eyes, but he slapped my pussy again, and I opened them, keeping my gaze locked on his as my orgasm swelled into an overwhelming wave, the intensity more powerful, more visceral, than anything I’d ever experienced.

  When the waves of exquisite pleasure had finally finished pulsing through me, I collapsed back on the table. I was hot all over. Not just my pussy, but my whole body, felt bright and flushed and still ready for him.

  Noah stood up and stared down at me, his eyes hooded and flashing dark promises. “Tell me.”

  “That felt amazing.”

  “What did?” he demanded. He reached down and grabbed the bottom of his shirt and pulled it off, exposing his body to me. His chiseled pecs glistened under the lights, bouncing off his flawless skin.

  “Your mouth on my pussy,” I whispered.

  “Louder.”

  “Your mouth. On my clit. Your tongue inside of me.”

  “I’m going to fuck you now, Charlotte,” he said. He leaned down and pressed his body weight into mine, the way he’d been doing all night, his cock bulging through his pants, pushing against my bare pussy. “I’m going to start slow, and then I’m going to go hard. I’m going to make you scream my name. And then I’m going to pull out of that tight little pussy and come all over you.”

  I groaned and shivered, and he stood back up and began undoing his belt. I leaned back on the table for a moment, staring up the ceiling, trying to catch my breath before he continued round two of his delicious assault on my body.

  I curved my hands around the tablecloth, twisting it, the fabric silky smooth against my palms.

  I heard the zip of Noah’s pants, the fabric rustling as he took them off.

  He positioned his cock at my opening, then reached down and unbuttoned the mesh shirt I was wearing, letting my breasts out.

  He groaned, and then his hands were on me, kneading my tits as he angled himself over me. “Jesus, you are so sexy.” He pinched my nipple so hard I yelped, then pulled back and smacked my tit so hard it jiggled. “Beg.”

  “Please.”

  “More.”

  “Please fuck me.”

  “Tell me what you want.”

  “To feel your cock inside of me.”

  His eyes brightened as he listened to my dirty talk, and he pulled back, then leaned his head down and spit on my pussy. He rubbed his cock over my slit, getting me nice and wet. Not that I needed it. I was so wet already. My juices mixed with his saliva and ran down over my skin.

  “I’m going to fuck you so hard, baby,” he said, as he stroked his dick against the outside of my core. “Harder than I’ve ever fucked you. I’m going to make your tits bounce. I’m going to make your pussy come.”

  He pushed into me, and my channel tightened around him, taking him, pulling him inside of me. I fought back against my body, resisting the urge I had to come just from the feel of him inside of me.

  He pulled out and then pushed back into me, getting me used to his cock, which stretched my opening even with all of the lubrication.

  He started going faster.

  And faster.

  Harder.

  And harder.

  He pushed into me deeper, his muscles flexing with effort, his hips grinding, his muscular body poised over me as he pounded my pussy.

  I cried out and gripped the cloth underneath me, my body stretched to the max, tightly filled by his cock. The desire inside of me engulfed my body, the flames licking all the way from my head down to the tips of my toes.

  His eyes were on mine, and he reached down and put his hand on my throat, right above my collar, tightening his grip slowly, applying just the slightest amount of pressure.

  He used the grip for leverage, a way to pound into me harder and harder.

  I could feel myself about to come again, and I turned my head, because I knew that looking at him was going to make my orgasm come faster.

  He pushed his body down on top of mine, and he was nipping at my ear, his hand still on my neck, the pressure becoming a little more intense as he angled his torso so he could fuck me even harder.

  I turned my head and moaned, and he silenced me with a kiss, the two of us moaning into each other’s mouths before he broke away, his eyes on mine.

  If I looked at him any longer, I was going to come.

  So I turned my head back to the side.

  And that’s when I heard it.

  Vibrating.

  I tensed, my toes curling.

  “Goddamn, you’re so fucking tight, baby,” Noah growled.

  What was that vibrating noise?

  Some instrument of torture Noah was going to use on me?

  I cast my gaze around the room, my eyes locking on a bluish light was coming from just a couple of inches away from me and shining across the table. Relief flooded through me as I realized the vibrating wasn’t coming from a torture device at all. It was Noah’s phone. He’d set it down on the tabl
e, and now it was buzzing right next to me with a text.

  My toes uncurled and my body relaxed.

  But my relief was short-lived.

  Because suddenly, there it was.

  A text message.

  I wasn’t snooping. The text was impossible to miss – it was right on the screen of Noah’s phone, plain as day. I couldn’t have avoided seeing it even if I’d tried.

  The words were innocuous enough:

  Got your message. Where shall me meet?

  It was who it was from that sent a dagger of fear slashing through my heart.

  LAMEUIX.

  The same name John had texted to me before he died.

  “Fuck, Charlotte, I need to feel you come on my shaft before I shoot my load on you,” Noah breathed. He was still on top of me, but I couldn’t hear him, couldn’t make sense of what he was saying.

  Lameuix.

  Noah had told me it was just nonsense, that it meant nothing, but now he was getting a text from someone with the exact name.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  I couldn’t speak.

  Everything in the room sank underwater, turning everything that was happening into a dreamlike scene that moved in slow motion.

  Noah was still moving inside of me, his grip on my collar tightening.

  I reached for it, my hands gripping his.

  I was choking.

  My brain turned in on itself, betraying me, and suddenly I was back at Force with Professor Worthington the night he cut my clothes off and climbed on top of me, the night he slashed Noah wide open with a knife.

  “Red,” I whispered, but I wasn’t sure if I’d actually said it or if I’d just imagined it.

  I felt like I was suffocating, like my windpipe was being crushed. I could smell the fear and the twisted desire of Force in the air, could feel the tight grip of horrific fear I’d felt.

  I reached down with one hand and grabbed Noah’s hip, wanting to tell him to stop, that I was dying. My hand touched his scar, and as soon as it did, I was jolted back to that moment, the moment where I thought he was dead, lying there on the ground, bleeding.

  So much blood.

  The paramedics pumping his chest.

  “Noah!” I screamed. “Noah, please, stop, Noah!”

  He was off of me in a half a second, pulling out of me, bending down to unshackle my ankles seemingly before I’d even stopped screaming.

  “Charlotte,” he said, standing up and unfastening my collar. “It’s okay, baby, it’s okay.” He reached for me, pulling me close to his chest. “It’s okay. You’re here. You’re safe.”

  My heart rate was starting to slow, but it was all relative. It had already been so high that even with a slowdown, it was still through the roof.

  “No, I’m not safe,” I cried, pushing him away. I tasted salt on my lips, and I realized I’d started to cry. “Why didn’t you stop?”

  “What?” Confusion marred his face. “I did stop.”

  “No, when I safe worded.” But I wasn’t even sure I’d said the word out loud, and if I had, it might have been whispered so softly he couldn’t hear it.

  “I didn’t hear you. Oh my God, Charlotte, I… ” He shook his head, the devastation apparent on his chiseled features.

  “You should have stopped,” I said. I was really crying now, the tears coming faster, my chest heaving.

  I buttoned my shirt back up and reached for my panties, discarded in a tangle on the floor. Noah reached down and picked his own shirt up, went to put it on me, to cover me, but I elbowed him away. “Don’t.”

  I was scared and confused.

  About the safe word, yes. Had I said it? Had I imagined it? It was obvious I’d had some kind of flashback, but what about that text?

  Lameuix.

  The word reverberated through my head.

  “Charlotte—”

  “Please,” I said. “Please, Noah, just take me home.”

  * * *

  We rode back home in the limo.

  The city had started to wake up, shaking its limbs and wiping the sleep from its eyes. It was in the middle of its morning stretch, the early morning gym goers heading down the street with their gym bags, headphones slung around their necks, waving through the throng of businessmen heading to work in a never-ending race to be the first to office.

  The back of the limo was cold, and I reached over and turned the heat on full blast, the air whooshing out and into the backseat.

  But it didn’t help.

  I was still freezing.

  I was wearing Noah’s shirt, and even though it came down to right above my knees, I still had nothing but that damn g-string on the bottom. My whole body was broken out in chill bumps.

  I knew it wasn’t just the temperature.

  I’d been wearing the exact same outfit all night, and there were times I’d been scorching hot.

  “Charlotte,” Noah said. “Please, talk to me.”

  “I don’t feel like talking.” I was looking out the window, my back to him.

  “Charlotte, you have to know, if I had heard you safe word, I would have stopped immediately.” He reached for my hand and I let him hold it. “You can’t possibly think –“

  “Who’s Lameuix, Noah?” I asked, turning to look at him.

  He had the decency to at least look startled, although there was no sense of guilt, at least not on his face or on his tone. His face tightened to stone, and a vein in his neck throbbed. “Charlotte. You will not ask me about that.”

  I squeezed his hand, so tight I could feel the tendons and muscles through his skin. “Yes, I will ask you about it, Noah, and I will expect an answer.”

  His hand went slack in mine, and he let me squeeze it even harder, so hard that my own hand began to hurt.

  “Charlotte.” His tone was a warning. “You do not want to do this.”

  “I don’t want to do what?” I asked, and then I took my hand from his and slammed my fist against the seat.

  He jumped a little bit, the first real reaction I’d seen from him since we’d gotten into the car. “You do not want to press me. Trust me.”

  “How can I trust you, Noah?” I cried. “How can I trust you when you won’t tell me anything?”

  “That is what trust is, Charlotte. It is giving someone your belief even when there are things telling you not to. It’s – “ He cut off, and I saw the dawning of realization moving like a shadow over his features. He shifted away from me on the seat and looked out the window at the wakening city.

  “What?” I asked. “What is it?”

  “That’s why you thought you safe worded,” he said quietly. “When you didn’t.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t trust me. You think that if you’d used that word, if you’d said it, I might not have stopped.”

  “No.” I shook my head. It wasn’t true. I knew Noah would stop if I used my safe word. I trusted him completely when it came to that. And yet the cold fingers of doubt were creeping through me, making me question everything. He hadn’t told me he knew Lameuix. What the hell else was he capable of?

  “Anything I keep from you, I do it to protect you,” he said. “I made that very clear to you from the beginning.”

  The limo was rolling to a stop now in front of our building.

  I was tired.

  My body felt bruised and broken, not just from the sex play, but from the emotional toll the day had taken on me.

  “Let’s go inside,” I said. “We can go to sleep. It will look better in the morning.”

  “I think it’s better if I stay at a hotel tonight.” His voice was sure, steady.

  I keep quiet, not trusting myself to speak.

  “You need time to think,” he continued, every word shattering my heart into smaller pieces. “And honestly, so do I.”

  I wanted to protest, wanted to tell him I didn’t need time to think, that all I wanted was for him to come inside with me. I turned again and stared out the window. A bead of cond
ensation hung on the glass, and it slid down smooth surface before disappearing.

  “Why can’t we just be normal?” I whispered to myself, to him, to no one.

  “We will never be normal, Charlotte.”

  It was a variation of what he’d said to me outside the jail that day, the day I’d gone to visit Professor Worthington. Then, Noah had said it as a way to keep me happy, to make it sound like everything was fine, that even though we had challenges, we’d overcome them together, that everything would be okay because we loved each other.

  I’d been naïve enough to believe him. I’d stood on those bleaches in Times Square and I’d accepted that ring and I’d thought everything was perfect, that our nightmare was over.

  And now… now I didn’t know what to think.

  It was like everything had been erased – Noah getting cleared of murder, Professor Worthington being put in jail. We were right back where we’d started, with him keeping secrets and me doubting him. I felt like I didn’t even know him, this beautiful man sitting next to me, the man I wanted to spend my life with.

  “Where will you go?” I asked.

  “I told you. A hotel.”

  “And what… “ I licked my bottom lip and twisted the hem of my shirt nervously. “Then what will happen?”

  “I don’t know.” He turned to look at me. “But I cannot be with someone who doesn’t trust me.” He shook his head. “I just can’t.”

  “Noah,” I said, and I could hear the desperation in my voice.

  I swore I could see his eyes get watery, swore I could see the swell of his chest as he moved forward on the seat, and then his face darkened again and he sat back.

  “I’ll call you later,” he said.

  I choked back a sob, and then I got out of the limo.

  I stood there on the curb for a moment, not caring who saw me, the girl standing out here by herself in a long t-shirt, her hair tangled, her ankles rubbed raw from metal shackles.

  I watched the limo until it was out of sight.

  I waited a beat, allowing myself one final moment of hope, hope that he would change his mind, that the car would turn around.

  But my life wasn’t some romantic comedy where Matthew McConaughey chases Kate Hudson over the Brooklyn Bridge and confesses his love.