What He Shields (What He Wants Book Seventeen) by Hannah Ford Read Free Book Online Page A

you have a healthy marriage if those
were the rules?
    And yet underneath all of this swirling
confusion, another reality burned bright and hard.
    It was the best orgasm I’d ever had in my life.

 
    ***

 
    When we got back into the car Noah’s mood was
lighter.
    We hadn’t resolved anything and yet, somehow
we’d both gotten a release.
    We were hallway home when my phone buzzed with
a text.
    “Who is it?”   Noah asked, looking over at me sharply.
    “It’s John,” I said.   “The man from this morning, the one I’m
supposed to meet with tonight.”   I’d
never replied to his earlier text, and now he was following up, asking me if I
would still come tonight at six.
    Noah didn’t say anything.
    “Noah,” I said softly. “Nothing is going to
happen to me.”
    “You don’t know that.”
    “What kind of person would I be, Noah?” I asked
him.   “If I just ignored what
Mikayla had told me, if I just forgot about it?”   I remembered how it felt to be locked in
that club for even just a few hours, the heaviness of the air around me, the
hopeless feeling as I’d been led to that auction.
    Noah sighed.   “This is that important to you?”
    “Yes.”   I nodded, waiting for him to give his verdict.   If he forbid me
again to go and see this man, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.
    “Fine,” he said.   “One meeting.   One time.   That is it.   I will go with you.   We will stay for fifteen minutes.   And if I get any sense that he is full
of shit, or trying to manipulate you in any way, you will have no further
contact with him.     Do you understand?”
    “Yes,” I said, dizzy with relief.   “Yes, I understand.”
    I texted John back ,
telling him I would be there at six.
    Noah reached for my hand, his fingers
tightening around mine as we came to a stop at a red light.   “Charlotte,” he said.   “What just happened back there, in that
room… ”
    I put my hand on his knee and squeezed it
gently.   “Noah, those things that…
those things that happened to you.   They weren’t your fault.   I
hope you know that.”
    He kept his gaze ahead, watching as a family
crossed the street in front of us, a couple with their children, the boy riding
a scooter, his helmet askew on his head, the other little boy eating an ice
cream cone that had dripped all over his shirt.  
    Finally, Noah tore his gaze away and his eyes
locked on mine.   “You are good,” he
said.   “You are sweet and pure and
kind, and… ”   He trailed off, his
thumb grazing the back of my hand.   “When
I hear that voice, the one that tells me I’m worthless, that I’m a monster,
that I’m not worthy of anything, it is you that brings me back.   You would never be with anyone
horrible,” he said.   “You would
never be with someone who was unworthy of you.”
    “Oh, Noah,” I said, my voice catching at the
thought of those horrible things, the ones he’d been told when he was younger,
running through his head on a constant loop.
    I shifted on the seat and moved toward him, but
his phone rang, and he reached for it, his hand leaving mine, his demeanor
changing in an instant, so quickly it made me question if there had even been a
moment of closeness there at all.
    “Cutler,” he barked.   “Yes… yes… you did?   What the fuck was she doing there?”
    The light turned green and Noah turned the car
around, doing a U-turn in the middle of the street, all business again as he
pulled into the traffic that was streaming by.
    We began heading uptown, my head just as
confused as my body was satisfied.

 
    ***

 
    Clementine had found Lilah at a movie theatre
on 57 th Street, sitting in the back row, eating a carton of popcorn
mixed with Milk Duds.   There was a
movie playing on the screen, one of those animated children’s movies that had
Oscar award winning actors playing the voices of the characters and would end
up making a bazillion dollars.
    Clementine said Lilah had seemed