What He Sacrifices (What He Wants, Book Fourteen) (An Alpha Billionaire Romance) (8 page)

“No.”
 
Noah’s voice was calm.

Professor Worthington stepped toward Noah,
placed the tip of his knife against Noah’s side.
 
“I’ll cut him,” the professor said to
me.
 
“I’ll plunge the knife right
into him.
 
I’ll gut him and you can
watch him bleed out all over the floor.”

“Okay!” I said.
 
“Okay, please, no… I’m…I’m getting back on
the table.”
 

“Charlotte, no,” Noah said, but I was already
moving onto the table, getting up on top of it and starting to lie down.

“Why are you doing this?” Noah demanded of
Professor Worthington.
 
“Why are you
acting like such a sick fuck?”

“Because I’m sick of your type,” Professor
Worthington said simply.

“Is this because of the Walsh case?” Noah
asked.
 
“Is this because –
”

“Stop talking about that!” Professor Worthington
shrieked. “I don’t want to talk about that ever again!” He looked around wildly
for the
key to the shackles so he could lock me back
in, but he couldn’t find it.
 
He
turned to Noah.
 
“Where’s the key?”

Noah shrugged.
 
“I don’t know.”

This infuriated Professor Worthington.
 
He stepped toward Noah, the knife drawn.
I started to get up to help, but I caught a look from Noah.

No,
he
seemed to say.
 
Stay put.

“Give me the key!” Professor Worthington
screamed.
 

“I don’t have it.”
 

Professor Worthington turned back toward
Noah.
 
Noah tried to take a step
back, but Professor Worthington slashed the blade of his knife against Noah’s
side.
 
A pool of blood stained
Noah’s shirt crimson red, and I gasped and jumped off the table.
 
I ran at Professor Worthington, but as
soon as I got to him, he pushed me away and I fell onto my ass, hard.

“Stay away, whore,” he said.

“Let Charlotte go,” Noah said.
 
His cheeks were flushed, but other than
that, he wasn’t showing any signs of being hurt.
 
It must have been a shallow cut,
designed to scare him.
 
But next
time, Professor Worthington wouldn’t be so charitable.

“Why the
fuck
would I
do that?” Professor Worthington asked.

“Because you can have me,” Noah said.
 
“Go ahead, let her go and you can do
whatever you want to me.
 
Isn’t that
what you want?
 
To hurt me?”

“What?”
 
Professor Worthington seemed startled by this idea.
 
He cocked his head to the side, almost
like he was considering it.

“Let her go.
 
Then you can torture me as much as you
want.”

Professor Worthington grinned.
 
“Why would you let me do that?”

“Because I love her,” Noah said softly.

My heart clenched.
 
“I’m not leaving,” I said.

Noah shot me a warning look, and Professor
Worthington ignored me.
 
He took
another step toward Noah, who was still standing upright, even though the
blood stain
on his shirt was becoming darker and darker.

“I would never, ever let her go,” Professor
Worthington said.
 
“She means more
to you than anything.
 
I could never
hurt you more than if I hurt her.”
 
He was getting worked up now, his breath coming in gasps, his voice excited.
 
“You can watch her die.
 
And they’ll blame you.”
 
He laughed and laughed and laughed,
tilting his head back so far the light glinted off a filling in the back of his
mouth.

“Is that what you did to Nora?” Noah demanded.

Professor Worthington grinned.
 
“Nora,” he said.
 
“Oh, Nora.
 
She had a nice tight little pussy, but
you knew that, didn’t you, Noah?”

I saw Noah’s face change, saw it constrict in
pain.

Professor Worthington moved closer to him.
 
“She struggled.
 
She struggled while I choked her.
 
I told her they would blame you for
it.
 
I told her that I was doing it
because of you, that if she hadn’t been such a whore and ended up with the wrong
man, she wouldn’t be suffering.”

Noah’s jaw clenched, and he rushed at Professor
Worthington, but Professor Worthington stopped him, slashing at Noah’s hand
with the knife.
 
A jagged cut
appeared on Noah’s palm.

Professor Worthington pushed him up against the
wall.
 
“You are done winning,” he
said.
 
“You are completely
done.
 
This is my time now.”

Noah’s eyes met mine, and I saw him glance
toward the door.
 
And then I
realized what he’d been doing.
 
He
was trying to get Professor Worthington to go after him, so that I would have a
chance to escape.

He was letting Professor Worthington come after
him, was letting him hurt him so that I could get away.

I hesitated.

I could make a run for it.
 

I might make it.

At least I would have a chance.

He might catch me, but Noah would be behind
him.

I could run.

I could call for help.

I ran for the door, turned the lock and bolted
into the hall.

“Run, Charlotte!” I heard Noah scream.
 
“Run!”

I run down the hall as fast as I could,
slipping my shoes off so I could run faster.
 
I waited as long as my self-control
would allow before glancing behind me to see how far behind me Professor
Worthington was, if maybe Noah had been able to delay him.

But there was no one there.
 

Professor Worthington wasn’t coming after me.

Why wasn’t he coming after me?

I glanced around wildly at the different
corridors and rooms that feathered off of the hallway.
 
I had no idea where I was.
 
I hadn’t even been awake when Professor
Worthington had brought me here.
If I could make my way to the main room, I could ask someone if I could use
their phone.
 
Or maybe the police
would be here by then, since Noah had called them.
 
I could show them down here, if I could
remember where it was I’d come from.

From behind me, down the hall, I could hear a
tussle going on in the room I’d just come from.

I stopped.

I couldn’t leave him.

I couldn’t.

I knew he wanted me to get away.
 

But there was no way I was leaving him.

I ran back to the room.

Noah and Professor Worthington were locked in a
struggle, the two of them on the floor, Noah on top of the professor.
 

Noah looked up at me.
 
“Charlotte,” he said.
 
“Go!
 
Get out of here!”

The distraction was enough to give Professor
Worthington an advantage.
 
He pushed
Noah off of him and stood up, then came at me, his eyes crazed.
 
He looked like a demon, his eyes burning
with black rage.
 

This time he would waste no time torturing
me.
 

This time, he would go right for the kill.

I didn’t know I was going to do it until it
happened.

I pulled up the stiletto I was holding in my
hand, and using every ounce of strength I possessed, swung the heel at
Professor Worthington’s face.

He was bearing down on me, hunched over, and
the heel struck him right in the eye, wedging into his eyeball and staying
there.

I gasped in horror as blood spurted from the
socket and he screamed in agony.
 
His hands flew to the shoe and he tried to pull it out, but Noah was up
and struck him in the face, knocking him out in one blow.

I watched as Professor Worthington fell to the
ground.

“Oh my God,” I said.
 
“Oh my God, Noah.”
 
I rushed over to him, and Noah put his
arm around me.
 

“Shh,” he said.
 
“It’s okay.”
 
His ran his hand through my hair.
 
“You’re okay now.
 
You’re safe.”

I pulled back and looked at him.
 
His face was pale, and his other hand
was holding his side.
 

That’s when I noticed my feet were standing in
something thick and slippery.

“Oh,” I said, looking down in surprise. It was
blood.
 
I was standing in a pool of
blood.
 
Another drop slipped and
splattered against the top of my foot, and I was startled to realize it was
coming from Noah.

“Oh my God,” I said.
 
“Noah, you’re hurt.”

“I’m okay,” he said.
 
But blood pooled around his fingers, and
his skin had gone ghostly white.

“You need to sit down,” I said.
 
“Here, sit on the floor.”

He sat down on the floor, and I took his suit
coat off him and used it to put pressure on his wound.
 
But there was so much blood.
 

“I’m just… I’m going to stay here with you
until the bleeding stops, and then I’m going to go and get help.”
 
I glanced over to Professor Worthington,
but he was still knocked out cold, the heel of my shoe sticking out of his
eye.
 
It was sickening.
 
I wondered if he was dead.

“Charlotte,” Noah said.
 
“Charlotte.”
 
He reached up and grabbed my forearm,
and I shook my head.
 
I didn’t want
him to talk, didn’t want to hear what I knew he was about to say.

“I’m just going to stay here until the bleeding
stops,” I said again firmly.

“Charlotte, you need to know how much I love
you,” he said.
 
He swallowed, and
his lips were almost white.
 
“You
need to know that I want you to be happy, no matter what.”

“Stop!” I said.
 
He was so pale, and there was so much blood.
 
His jacket was already soaked, and I
didn’t know what else to do.
 
I
looked around wildly for something else I could use to stop the bleeding, but
there was nothing.
 
There was so much blood.
 
I
could smell it in the air, the metal scent so intense I could taste it on my
tongue.

“Charlotte,” he said, and his voice sounded
weak.

“No,” I said.
 
“No, Noah, please.
 
I’ll go get help.”
 
But I knew if I went to get help, he
would die.
 

“I love you,” he said, his grip on my forearm
loosening.
 
“I wanted to spend my
life with you.
 
I wanted to marry
you. I wanted to be with you forever.
 
It’s important to me that you know that.”

“We can still do all that,” I said, and I was
crying now, the tears sliding down my cheeks and dripping onto my lips.
 
“Please, just… you need to stay with me,
Noah.
 
Help will be here soon.”

“Do you know that I love you, Charlotte?”

“I do,” I said.
 
“I do know that, Noah.”

He let go of my arm.

“You changed me,” he murmured.
 
“We would have been so happy together.
 
You...” He trailed off, a wet gurgling
noise rising in his throat.
 
He
stopped talking, his hand going limp in mine.

“No!” I screamed.
 
“Noah!
 
No!”

I reached for him and began performing CPR.
 
I placed my hands on his chest and
started the compressions, but I could tell it wasn’t helping.
 
My hands were covered in his
blood,
so much I couldn’t even tell where it was coming
from.

“Noah, please, no,” I said.
 
“Please, no!
 
Stay with me…”

The door flew open and I my head whipped
around.