by Hannah Ford
The silence stretched between us, excruciating in its stillness, as I waited for him to break my heart.
“I’m not good for you,” he said. “I’m putting you in danger.”
Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry. I blinked quickly, trying to stop the tears that were slowly sliding down my cheeks from becoming an avalanche.
“You could have been hurt tonight, Charlotte. By Audi. By whoever killed Dani and Nora and Katie. My demons will overtake you, Charlotte. They’ll overtake you and they’ll ruin you.”
I bit my lip to keep from screaming at him, for calling him a bastard, a fraud, an asshole, and any other name that might hurt him. But just as fast as my anger burned, it flamed out.
Anger wouldn’t do anything. Calling him names wouldn’t help. Nothing could hurt him. He’d built his walls, and nothing could tear them down. He had no weakness.
Except for one.
I reached down and pulled his sweater off me, then tossed it on the floor.
“Charlotte,” he said, his voice laced with warning. “What are you doing?”
“Please,” I said, pulling the straps of my dress down, over my breasts, over my hips, slipping the fabric over my thighs and stepping out of it until I was left in just my thong and stilettos. “Take me.”
I got to my knees and crawled over to him, making sure to keep my ass high in the air like I knew he liked. When I reached him, I looked up at him and placed my hands behind my back. “I’ll do whatever you want, Noah. Do whatever you want to me. Just, please… don’t leave.”
His eyes blazed as he reached down and ran his thumb over my lips. He slipped his finger into my mouth and I sucked on it hungrily. Lust and want overtook his face as he slid his finger out of my mouth and ran it down over my neck, trailing it over my collarbone.
I tilted my head back, thrusting my breasts out for him.
“Please,” I begged. “Please, I’ll do anything.”
“Charlotte,” he said. But it wasn’t the way I wanted him to say my name. It wasn’t domineering. It wasn’t demanding. It wasn’t the voice of a man who knew what he wanted as was going to get it.
It was the voice of a man who’d made his decision and was sticking to it.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
He kneeled down on the carpet next to me and kissed me softly on the lips.
And then he got up and walked out the door.
The tears came as soon as I heard the click of the door behind him. Heartbreak and despair overtook me, along with the kind of crying that caused my body to shake, my eyes to swell shut, my stomach to ache. I collapsed onto the floor, not caring that I was naked, not caring that I could feel my cut starting to come open, not caring about anything except the fact that he was gone.
End of Book Eight – Click here for Book Nine, WHAT HE RESISTS, available now
